Christ Medical Center cardiologist Bruce Abramowitz, M.D. takes advantage of the high-tech simulation equipment to practice using a new device that protects patients during angioplasty procedures.

Cardiologists (such as Dr. Bassam Habbal and Dr. Bruce Abramowitz) at Advocate Christ Medical Center recently underwent a day of unique, simulation-based training on a bus as they practiced using a new device that protects patients during procedures to open clogged heart-bypass veins.

Called the Filter Wire Ex^TM System, the first-of-its-kind filter device blocks the movement of damaging blood clots and cholesterol deposits to the heart muscle, while still allowing the passage of blood, during procedures to open clogged heart-bypass veins.

As part of a national tour, the mobile surgical lab made its first visit to a Chicago-area hospital on September 30. This high-tech, heart-catheterization-laboratory-on-wheels offered interventional cardiologists at Christ Medical Center four simulated scenarios, in which the physicians used the new device as if treating a real patient. The revolutionary educational program represents the first use of medical simulation for training in the rollout of a new device.

Amy Vannier of Medical Simulation Corporation watches as Bassam Habbal, M.D., a cardiologist at Christ Medical Center, uses the simulation technology to practice a heart procedure with the new FilterWire device.

Advocate Christ Medical Center was the first hospital in Illinois - and only the second institution in the United States - to use the new filter wire system, following the device's approval in June by the federal Food and Drug Administration.

Other devices have been available to block the movement of blood clots and debris inside a patient's blood vessel, but in blocking the clots, these same devices also cut off much of the blood flow in the vein, thereby putting additional stress on the patient's heart during the procedure. The advantage of the new filter device, experts say, is that when placed in the diseased vein while the physician works, it allows blood to continue flowing through the vein to the heart. At the same time, it traps the blood-clot or cholesterol fragments that may be present.