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South San Francisco, Calif. (BW HealthWire), March 14,
2001
Imatron Inc. (Nasdaq:IMAT) announced that an important
new study
has been published in the March 2001 issue of the American Heart
Journal highlighting the superiority of Electron Beam Tomography (EBT)
as a diagnostic tool to assess the risk of heart attack in a large
group of asymptomatic men and women. Dr. Paolo Raggi from Tulane
University Medical Center, New Orleans and colleagues from Nashville,
Tennessee, examined EBT coronary artery scan results from 676 men and
women, average age 52, who underwent coronary artery scans using
Imatron's proprietary EBT scanner.
Dr. Raggi and fellow-investigators answered the request
of the
authors of the joint ACC/AHA Expert Consensus Document on Electron
Beam Computed Tomography for the Diagnosis and Prognosis of Coronary
Artery Disease, to publish further research into the potential for
using the EBT coronary artery scan as a cardiac diagnostic test. By
using sophisticated statistical analysis of the EBT results as
compared with standard risk factors such as family history, age,
smoking status, abnormal cholesterol, diabetes and high blood
pressure, the investigators were able to demonstrate that the EBT
coronary artery scan alone was more predictive than the total
combination of these risk factors. The most powerful measure of
coronary artery calcification (CAC) was found to be the age and
gender-specific percentiles derived from an independent group of more
than 10,000 previously scanned subjects. For instance, the presence of
calcium alone predicted an annual cardiac event rate of 5.4% as
compared to that of less than one percent based on smoking history
alone. The combination of a positive "calcium score" and active
cigarette smoking pushed the cardiac event probability up to a
remarkable 11% per year. Using the calcium score percentiles yielded
progressively higher odds ratios from 1.4% in the 10th percentile up
to 21.6% in the 90th percentile. This offers physicians powerful tools
which can be used to determine the optimum intervention for any
particular patient.
The authors were careful to demonstrate an added ability
to
predict risk over existing methods, and determined, using a variety of
statistical models that, "CAC carries relevant prognostic information
for the development of hard coronary events," even when other risk
factors were added to the model. They found that the calcium score
percentile was "the best event predictor across all models"
and
concluded that, "relative measures of CAC found on screening EBT
studies offer incremental prognostic information that may improve our
ability to predict CAD events."
S. Lewis Meyer, CEO of Imatron, described this paper
as one of the
most important to be published to date, since it definitively answers
questions raised by the ACC/AHA Expert Consensus Document authors.
"Odds ratios like those presented in Dr. Raggi's study are
unprecedented in the field of cardiology, providing physicians with an
opportunity to focus treatments on those patients with
atherosclerosis, independent of historically accepted cardiac risk
factors," he said, "and underline our confidence that the EBT
coronary
artery scan must inevitably become widely accepted in the physician
community and by the public at large. There can be no doubt that a
diagnostic tool with the predictive power and sensitivity of the EBT
coronary artery scan has the potential to revolutionize the way we
deal with coronary heart disease, the leading cause of death in the
United States. The awareness of this important fact is now clearly
building support for the widespread deployment of EBT technology."
Imatron Inc. is primarily engaged in designing, manufacturing,
marketing, and servicing high performance electron beam tomography
(EBT) scanners based on the Company's proprietary EBT technology.
Imatron's EBT scanner is now in use at more than 150 major medical
facilities and imaging centers around the world, including the Mayo
Clinic, Hackensack University Medical Center, Cedars-Sinai Medical
Center, Abbott-Northwestern Hospital, Mount Sinai Medical Center,
University of Iowa, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, UCLA Medical Center,
St. Francis Hospital, Stanford University, University of Pittsburgh
Medical Center, Edward Cardiovascular Institute, Michigan Heart
Imaging, Ohio Heart, University of Illinois, Arizona Heart Institute,
Alfried Krupp Krankenhaus, Essen, Landeskrankenhaus in Graz, Austria,
Cardiology Research Centre in Moscow, Russia, FAU Erlangen-Nurnberg in
Erlangen, Germany, Beijing Hospital in China, BodyScan Imaging Center
of Kansas City, ITG/HeartScan Imaging, Heart Savers of Irvine, The
Cooper Clinic, HealthScan of La Jolla, LifeScore of San Diego and
HealthScan of Plano (Dallas).
Except for the historical information contained herein,
the
matters discussed in this news release may contain forward-looking
statements that are based on current expectations and estimates about
the industry in which Imatron operates, the estimated impact of
certain technological advances, the estimated impact of published
research studies on scanner sales and procedures, as well as
management's beliefs and assumptions. It is important to note that the
Company's actual results could differ materially from those projected
in such forward-looking statements. The factors that could cause
actual results to differ materially include, among others; failed
clinical demonstration of certain asserted technological advantages
and diagnostic capabilities; reliance on product distributors;
competition in the diagnostic imaging market; failure to improve
product reliability or introduce new product models and enhancements;
delays in production and difficulty in obtaining components and
sub-assemblies from limited sources of supply; inability to meet
cash-on-delivery or prepayment terms from vendors; determinations by
regulatory and administrative government authorities; patent
expiration and denial of patent applications; the high cost of the
scanner as compared to commercially available CT scanners; and the
risk factors listed from time to time in the Company's Securities and
Exchange Commission reports, including their reports on Form 10-K for
their current fiscal year.
CONTACT: Imatron Inc.
S. Lewis Meyer, 650/583-9964 (CEO)
Robin Kelley, 650/583-9964 (Investor Relations)
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