FDA APPROVES ST. JUDE MEDICAL'S QUICKOPT PROGRAMMING DEVICE FOR HEART FAILURE AND ICD PATIENTS

St. Jude Medical announced Aug. 22 the FDA had approved its QuickOpt timing cycle optimization feature to diagnose heart abnormalities. The feature allows physicians to gather results more efficiently than they can through echocardiography -- a noninvasive procedure that uses ultrasonic waves to generate images of heart abnormalities.

The QuickOpt feature is designed to help diagnose patients with cardiac resynchronization therapy defibrillator devices and traditional implantable cardioverter defibrillators, the firm said.

The feature performs its diagnosis in less than two minutes and produces results electronically, compared with echocardiography procedures that can take between 30 and 120 minutes and the results require manual interpretation by a technician, the firm added.