Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 17, 1990 TAG: 9005170648
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-3 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium
Kathy Chanik, 37, of Virginia Beach, was reported to be alert and in good spirits several hours after Wednesday's operation.
Officials said Chanik, a former Navy nurse who plays the harp at a Virginia Beach restaurant, is the 29th patient in the world to receive the device.
Doctors and developers said the pump represents a major step toward development of an artificial pancreas, possibly in less than five years.
"This is one more step toward the control of this devastating disease," Sister Ellen, president of DePaul, said during a news conference Wednesday afternoon.
Chanik's diabetes was first diagnosed in 1973. Since then, she has had to give herself from four to eight insulin injections daily. But, as of Wednesday morning, her body's insulin needs were being provided by the pump.
Dr. Joseph T. Mullen, director of surgery at DePaul, said he expected to release her in two days.
"The installation of the pump was really the easiest part of the procedure," said Mullen.
Of greater concern was the preparation of the pump, a 50-step process that includes filling it with 6,000 units of insulin - about a tablespoon in concentrated form - to meet the average diabetic's needs for three months.
"It's not a laborious technique, it's a meticulous one," said Dr. Leon-Paul Georges, director of the Diabetes Institutes, a joint effort of DePaul and the Eastern Virginia Medical School.
The device is a second generation of implantable insulin pump and is based on technology first developed for NASA, which needed a pump that could deliver small yet precise amounts of fluid.
The first-generation pump was tested in 18 patients, said Patrice L. Heck, marketing manager for MiniMed Technologies, headquartered in Sylmar, Calif.
"But the pump needed to be enhanced and [made] more user friendly," she said.
The new pump, which looks like a hockey puck but is about half the size, is radio-controlled by a hand-held device. Patients can program the pump to automatically supply routine insulin needs and have the ability to give themselves additional insulin as needed.
The pump is refilled in the physician's office. The pump and its control device are battery operated.
The pump allows more direct and precise introduction of insulin into the body than a skin injection. It does not monitor blood-sugar levels, however, and patients must still test themselves, and it also does not tell the patient patients how much insulin they need, Heck said.
The pump and its monitor will sound an alarm in the event of failure and the device also is designed with a fail-safe mechanism that would prevent a patient from receiving an insulin overdose. In the event of a breakdown, "the patient would revert back to their former mode of treatment," Georges said.
Another DePaul patient, also a woman, is to receive the pump in a week. At least eight more area residents will be put on pumps and monitored for at least a year.
Trials and associated research, which will eventually involve 10 U.S. medical centers, are expected to last two years. The company hopes the device will be approved for general use by the Food and Drug Administration in 1992.
by CNB