Okay, so maybe that’s not exactly how it happened…

But a travesty was committed, and I was the victim. My name is Dan, and this is my (mildly dramatized) story of corruption and betrayal in Milan, Italy…

I chose a small establishment for dinner. The wholesomeness of the Mediterranean spice pallet was floating around on a buttered, grilled, garlicy breeze. I ordered salmon and savored every bite of it, with a spray of vegetables that could have graced a table in an art museum.

Only later did I discover the betrayal. The Milanese chef, whose culinary magic is renown, had given me food poisoning. So the crime was my upset stomach? No, but the ruination of Milanese cooking! A travesty!

Ruination of something venerable costs everyone. It lessens the whole, and if it persists, can tarnish an entire industry.

While in Milan, I had another similarly unpleasant experience: explaining to a doctor that he’d been misinformed by someone in the medical industry. He had been told that Pulsatility Index (PI) was a foolproof way of verifying patency of a CABG graft, and that no other check or counterpoint was worth considering. Not only is that patently untrue, it’s dangerous to the patient.

PI is a measurement of great contention in the flow industry. Some insist that it is the Holy Grail, while others like Transonic—who developed ultrasound medical flow measurement in the first place—insist that it should always be taken with a small grain of salt, and a large grain of comparison.

The calculation of PI relies on an average of max and min flow. Because widely spread extrema can yield the same average as closely spaced extrema, both copacetic and concerning physiological situations can yield the same PI. This does not mean that PI is useless, it simply means that PI should always be used in conjunction with another metric, namely, flow waveform. And in any general medical sense, this is perfectly reasonable, since it’s what competent clinicians do every day. No one makes a diagnosis by patient temperature alone.

Flow measurement is a venerable workhorse. It’s been helping clinicians save lives from the OR to the hemodialysis clinic for decades. We’re proud of what we do, and proud of what we’ve done for years. We respect it, and protect it from misinformation, because without proper care, anything can go bad.

Even a piece of salmon in the hands of a Milanese chef.

Click here to see the technology we pioneered 40 years ago, and how it can help you save patient lives.

Thanks for reading,

               Transonic Systems, Inc

                              The Measure of Better Results