5 Minutes Thursday: Medgadget Investigates

Remember the story, reported here at Medgadget on January 17, about the first Iowan to receive a new electronic heart implant? The device that was implanted was the InSync Sentry™ ICD with OptiVol™ Fluid Status Monitoring: a cardiac resynchronization therapy device combined with an automatic fluid status monitor.
Surprisingly, this morning Long Beach Memorial Hospital, in a press release announced their intention to “implant world’s first device to manage the heart’s fluid accumulation”. It turns out that this is the very same InSync Sentry device implanted in Iowa ten days ago. For clarification, we contacted Jeanne Randol, a spokesman for the Long Beach Memorial Medical Center, and she was unable to resolve the implication that their institution was the first to perform the procedure. The hospital did report that the implantation was completed successfully today and the patient is recovering.