MARLBOROUGH, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec 17, 2024--
CardioFocus, Inc., a medical device company dedicated to advancing ablation treatment for cardiac arrhythmias, today announced the first series of patients treated with the investigational OptiShot™ Pulsed Field Ablation (PFA) System for the treatment of paroxysmal atrial fibrillation as part of the VISION AF clinical trial.
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Dr. Vivek Reddy, Director of Cardiac Arrhythmia Services at Mount Sinai Hospital and Prof. Petr Neužil, Chief of Cardiology at Na Homolce Hospital, performed the first cases at Na Homolce Hospital, Prague, Czech Republic. The first-in-human trial will treat up to 50 patients in the coming months with 12-month follow-up planned, including critical remapping procedures to validate the efficacy of this novel technology.
“The OptiShot balloon catheter is unique among the advanced generation of PFA catheters, with its ability to deliver circumferential lesions to the pulmonary veins with endoscopic visual confirmation of electrode-tissue contact,” said Dr. Reddy. “Direct contact confirmation made me more confident that our acute treatment strategy with this system may provide good long-term outcomes.”
Professor Petr Neužil said, “The ultra-compliant balloon allows for adaptation to all anatomies with unparallelled tissue contact and precise pulsed electric field energy delivery. This design is focused on raising the bar for patient outcomes and we look forward to continuing the study.”
“CardioFocus has combined our expertise in pulsed field waveforms with our clinically proven compliant balloon system to create OptiShot, a next generation PFA system for the treatment of atrial fibrillation,” said CardioFocus CEO Steve Ogilvie. “We are one step closer toward providing a true single shot pulmonary vein isolation tool, designed for safe and effective patient treatment. We are thankful to our electrophysiologist partners as well as the CardioFocus team and advisors for making this remarkable achievement happen.”
CardioFocus is taking a portfolio approach to PFA. In addition to OptiShot, CardioFocus will continue clinical trials evaluating the investigational QuickShot™ PFA System, a large area focal ablation catheter that integrates with various navigation technologies. In the EU CardioFocus has treated over 6000 patients with the Centauri PFA System, which uses a proprietary monopolar waveform with marketed contact-force sensing focal ablation catheters and mapping systems.
The OptiShot PFA Balloon System is investigational and not approved for commercial use.
About CardioFocus, Inc.
Headquartered in Marlborough, MA, CardioFocus is a medical device innovator and manufacturer dedicated to advancing ablation treatment for cardiac disorders such as atrial fibrillation, the most common heart arrhythmia. For more information, visit CardioFocus.com.
Image: [A] Endoscopic view of LSPV, [B]&[D] OptiShot Balloon, [C]&[E] Post PFA map (Photo: Business Wire)
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Hold on to those Thanksgiving turkeys! WKRP is coming to Cincinnati — for real this time.
“I cannot, by contract, tell you when. I cannot tell you who. But I can tell you, direct to the camera, WKRP, after 48 years, is coming to Cincinnati,” D.P. McIntire, who runs the media nonprofit that is auctioning the famous call letters, told The Associated Press. “Book it! It’s done!”
The call sign was made famous by “WKRP in Cincinnati,” a CBS television sitcom that ran from 1978 to 1982. It made stars of actors like Loni Anderson and Richard Sanders, whose bumbling newsman Les Nessman reported on a Thanksgiving promotion gone bad when live but flightless turkeys were dropped from a helicopter.
McIntire remembers watching the show’s first episode — featuring disc jockeys Dr. Johnny Fever (Howard Hesseman) and Venus Flytrap (Tim Reid) — in the living room with his parents and older sister.
“And at the end of the 30-minute episode,” he said, “I got up and I proclaimed, `I’m going to be in radio. And if I ever have the opportunity, I’m going to run a station called WKRP.’”
McIntire said he got his first on-air job at 13 as a news anchor at WNQQ “Wink FM” in Blairsville, Pennsylvania.
Fast forward to 2014, when his North Carolina-based nonprofit acquired the call sign from the Federal Communications Commission. Stations in Dallas, Georgia, and Alexandria, Tennessee, previously bore the letters.
McIntire laughs as he recalls his chat with a woman in the agency’s audio division.
He had two sets of call letters in mind. She told him he needed a third.
“Being the jokester that I am, I said, `Well, if you need three, and if it’s available, we’ll take WKRP,’” he said. “And 90 seconds later, she came back and she said, `Mr. McIntire. Congratulations. You’re the general manager of WKRP in Raleigh, North Carolina.’”
WKRP-LP — 101.9 on the FM dial — went live Nov. 30, 2015. The LP stands for “low power,” a class of station created to serve more local audiences that didn’t want mass-market content.
“Our format is what radio used to be 35 years ago in small-town America,” he said. “There is Greats of the 80s, Sounds of the 70s, 90s Rewind.”
LPFM is restricted to nonprofit organizations like his Oak City Media, and it’s definitely local.
“Your broadcast capacity is limited to 100 watts,” McIntire said. “So, your average range is between, depending on your terrain and circumstances, 4 and 12 miles (6 and 19 kilometers) in any direction. Enough to cover a small town.”
And, by necessity, it’s a low-budget affair.
The transmitter is in a corner of McIntire’s garage, between a recycling bin and the cleaning supplies. The broadcast antenna sits atop a 25-foot (7.62-meter) metal flagpole in the backyard. The studio — microphones and a mixing board hooked up to a computer — is in McIntire’s basement.
Like the WKRP of television, McIntire and his partners set out to be “irreverent.” One of their offerings is a two-hour show called “Weird Al and Friends,” focusing on the satirical works of Weird Al Yankovic.
They even had an annual Thanksgiving turkey giveaway. But don’t call the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals — they hand out gift certificates to a local grocery store.
“We don’t toss them out of helicopters,” he said with a laugh.
After 10 years on the air, the 56-year-old McIntire decided it was time to pass the reins.
“We’re in a position where the older members like me who started the station are turning the leadership over to younger members,” he said. “They’re not interested in radio.”
They put out a call for bids to use the call letters on FM and AM radio, as well as television and digital television.
They intend to use the proceeds for a new nonprofit venture called Independent Broadcast Consultants. He said IBC will be “geared specifically toward helping these new broadcasters get up and running, get the consulting that they need in order to be, hopefully, more successful than we have been.”
Oak City Media was all set to hand off the television-related suffixes — WKRPTV and WKRPDT — when another group defaulted on the agreement, McIntire said. But he said the Cincinnati deal is in the bag, he just can’t legally discuss it.
“It will be radio,” he said. “But that’s all I can tell you at this time.”
Whatever they do with the call sign, he hopes they will be true to the show that inspired it.
“It has a special place in the hearts of an awful lot of people,” he said. “And we have been very, very, very proud to have been a steward of that legacy.”
D.P. McIntire leans against a deck beneath the WKRP radio antenna in the backyard of his home in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)
D.P. McIntire points to the transmitter for WKRP radio in a corner of his garage in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)
The WKRP radio antenna sits atop a 25-foot flagpole behind D.P. McIntire's home in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)
A photo of the cast members of the sitcom "WKRP in Cincinnati" sits in a window at the home of D.P. McIntire in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)
D.P. McIntire stands beneath a WKRP banner in the backyard of his home in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)
