FDA approves Sonocur, workstation

Siemens' answer to pain management, a low-energy extracorporeal shock-wave therapy system called Sonocur Basic, passed FDA muster in July. The agency approved the company's new product for use in the treatment of patients with lateral epicondylitis, a condition commonly referred to as tennis elbow. The approval is the latest evolutionary step for shock-wave therapy, which began as a treatment for kidney stones. Its failure to effectively treat biliary stones more than a decade ago caused the technology to slip from the limelight. Pain treatment promises to rejuvenate the technology, whose latest configuration is a far cry from the bulky stone-blasting machines. Sonocur Basic features an articulating head, which is placed on the painful area. The device administers a preset number of shock waves at low energy.

Also last month, the agency cleared the multimodality workstation Avia, which is being packaged with Hitachi's new PET scanner, Sceptre. The workstation with Fusion7D is designed to process and display DICOM data from any digital imaging modality.