Medical device company hopes to quicken life support with new product

Medical device company TandemLife has released a product designed to simplify and speed up the process of putting critically-ill patients on extracorporeal life support.

The company has commercially released its TandemLife Priming Tray, offering healthcare professionals a larger window of opportunity to accurately assess a patient’s condition and provide appropriate care.

TandemLife hopes its product can help maximise the number of patients who receive advanced extracorporeal life support (ECLS). The company states this change could be achieved by the combination of its TandemHeart pump and TandemLung oxygenator into a single, pre-connected packaging solution that also serves as a priming basin for the system.

The company’s medical devices can assist the circulation and oxygenation of blood for a patient with compromised cardiac or respiratory function. TandemLife’s new Priming Tray can help the aforementioned devices be deployed in just a few minutes compared to an hour with previous technology.

ECLS is generally only used within operating rooms and intensive care units due to the complexity of initiating this type of life support.

ECLS is a procedure performed on the outside of the body, maintaining tissue oxygenation for days to weeks in patients with life threatening respiratory/cardiac failure.

John Marous, president & CEO of TandemLife said: “In 2012 our team committed to an extremely aggressive program; developing and launching eight new medical devices in four years. The TandemLife product line is our most important program to date because of its potential to create a much needed paradigm shift in emergent cardiac care. With the addition of the TandemLife Priming Tray, our system can be deployed in five minutes or less, providing both physicians and patients with the most valuable resource of all: more time.”