Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla, San Diego

Established in 1924 by Ellen Browning Scripps, Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla has been one of Southern California’s premier medical centers for more than 90 years. Scripps La Jolla was ranked No. 1 by U.S. News & World Report for the San Diego region and among the best in the nation in multiple specialties, including Electrophysiology.

Douglas Gibson, MD, specializes in the advanced care of patients suffering from arrhythmia such as atrial fibrillation, supraventricular tachycardia and ventricular tachycardia. He is an expert in catheter ablation, a procedure that destroys the abnormal heart cells that cause arrhythmias.

" I recently had the opportunity to trial the CIS Model-6 form Clear Image Scientific in one of our EP labs that has been plagued by noise for years. In conjunction with our biomedical engineering department we tried several of the standard noise trouble shooting tactics. This was a very frustrating effort that lasted for up to a year. Some potential solutions were prohibitively expensive and not an easy sell to the hospital. A very significant amount of non-productive time was spent in that lab troubleshooting noise.

I learned of the Shunyata system from a friend, so I contacted Grant Samuelsen from Clear Image Scientific about an evaluation. We had it installed in our most challenging lab as a trial. The system includes the CIS Model-6 and some supporting shielded power cords from CIS. The system not only filters out noise form the power grid but also filters out component to component noise by isolating the components from each other.

The results were impressive and consistent. This lab is now better than our recently built state of the art labs. During our most complex ablations we are able to maximize gain without being troubled by noise. We are able to widen our filter settings. We are able to clearly see signal degradation during ablation on a more consistent basis than ever before. The results are just as important during routine ablations. No longer am I wasting hours a month troubleshooting noise. Operator efficiency and lab efficiency are both significantly improved. Practically what this means for a hospital is that more cases can take place in an EP lab without running into costly overtime.

Although this was a very important solution for one of our older labs we are now planning to install the equipment in all EP labs. Looking forward to it. "