Recently noticed this claim. “NEW YORK (Reuters) – After relying on a pacemaker for 20 years, Carol Kasyjanski has become the first American recipient of a wireless pacemaker that allows her doctor to monitor her health from afar — over the Internet.”

http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE5790AK20090811

(Strangely it became a World first when taken up by Yahoo! http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090810/lf_nm_life/us_pacemaker_2)

“Dr. Steven Greenberg, the director of St. Francis’ Arrhythmia and Pacemaker Center, said the new technology helps him better treat his patients and will likely become the new standard in pacemakers.

He said the server and the remote monitor communicate at least once a day to download all the relevant information and alert the doctor and patient if there is anything unusual.

“If there is anything abnormal, and we have a very intricate system set up, it will literally call the physician responsible at two in the morning if need be,” he said.

The wireless pacemaker, made by St. Jude Medical Inc., received FDA approval in July.”

That sounds great … but it certainly isn’t much of a first other than for the St Francis’ centre.

At BMJ Case Reports we published a case of a web-connected implantable cardioverter defibrillator detecting digoxin toxicity a few months ago. That case report cites a paper that evaluated a German system where “devices have an embedded antenna for wireless transmissions of diagnostic information to a Service Center where messages are decrypted, stored as well as loaded on a protected website accessible to the attending physician through identity codes and a personal password“.

A so-called medical breakthrough story changes in the telling.

The Reuter’s story starts:

“NEW YORK (Reuters) – After relying on a pacemaker for 20 years, Carol Kasyjanski has become the first American recipient of a wireless pacemaker that allows her doctor to monitor her health from afar — over the Internet.” Reuters original

but has been misquoted by Yahoo! News as

“NEW YORK (Reuters) – After relying on a pacemaker for 20 years, Carol Kasyjanski has become the world’s first recipient of a wireless pacemaker that allows her doctor to monitor her health from afar — over the Internet.” Yahoo!’s misquoted version

‘First American’ becomes ‘World’s first’. Yahoo! News says it “does not write or edit any of the news on our site.” So I wonder how it got changed?

Are news websites in the best position to judge medical firsts?