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Daxor Announces Publication of Review Article on Use of Blood Volume Analysis to Guide Ultrafiltration in the Management of Con

^{Published on 2010-05-27 05:40:59 - Market Wire}
 

NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire - May 27, 2010) - Daxor Corporation (NYSE Amex: [ DXR ]), a medical instrumentation and biotechnology company, today announced the publication of a review article in the journal US Cardiology (2010; 7(1):72-75) titled, "Blood Volume Analysis Coupled with Ultrafiltration in the Management of Congestive Heart Failure - Guided Therapy to Achieve Euvolemia." This article reviews the potential use of blood volume analysis to guide fluid removal by ultrafiltration in congestive heart failure patients. Heart failure patients with expanded blood volumes have been shown to have significantly reduced survival relative to patients with normal volume status: A 2004 study from the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center showed a significant survival advantage for those heart failure patients who were normal or minimally hypovolemic compared to those who were hypervolemic.

Fluid retention is the primary presenting symptom in approximately 90% of the one million annual hospitalizations for heart failure. Diuretics, which cause patients to excrete water, are commonly prescribed to treat fluid overloaded heart failure patients. In some cases, direct fluid removal via ultrafiltration is also performed. Regardless of which method of fluid removal is employed, it is difficult to determine when congestive heart failure patients have achieved a normal volume status. If insufficient fluid is removed, patients remain volume overloaded and are at risk for higher rates of adverse outcomes -- including an increased risk for early rehospitalization and death. In contrast, if physicians remove too much fluid, patients may also experience adverse outcomes in the form of low blood pressure and deterioration of kidney function possibly leading to kidney failure. Physicians often rely upon clinical criteria, such as improvement in swelling of lower limbs (edema), improvement in chest X-rays, and changes in various markers found in the blood, to estimate how much fluid to remove. However, the study cited above also showed that such clinical findings correctly identify patients' volume status just 51% of the time relative to a measured blood volume analysis. Thus, clinical assessment -- even by experienced heart failure physicians -- may be imprecise to identify patients with volume overload. In contrast, blood volume analysis provides a tool which can precisely measure intravascular blood volume status. One of Daxor Corporation's goals is to demonstrate the benefits of direct blood volume measurement in guiding fluid management in heart failure patients.

Dr. Mitchell Saltzberg, the Medical Director of the Heart Failure program at the Christiana Care Health System, authored this article, which can be viewed on Daxor's website at [ www.daxor.com/pdfs/US-Cardiology-Saltzberg-BVA.pdf ]. Dr. Saltzberg is the Principal Investigator for a clinical research study to evaluate whether using blood volume measurement to provide real-time guidance of ultrafiltration leads to improved outcomes in hospitalized heart failure patients.

Daxor Corporation manufactures and markets the BVA-100, a semi-automated Blood Volume Analyzer. The BVA-100 is used in conjunction with Volumex, Daxor's single use diagnostic kit. For more information regarding Daxor Corporation's Blood Volume Analyzer BVA-100, visit Daxor's website [ www.Daxor.com ].