Philips announces world's smallest multiplane transesophageal transducer

Andover, Mass., USA – Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI) today introduced its microTEE, the world’s smallest transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) transducer for cardiac imaging of neonatal patients. As part of the latest Vision release for the Philips iE33 intelligent echocardiography system, the microTEE transducer provides pediatric cardiologists with a diagnostic tool for imaging the hearts of newborn patients. Philips microTEE will be showcased next week at the 20th annual American Society of Echocardiography (ASE) in Washington, D.C. and will be available for sale globally this summer.

Due to the larger size of previously available pediatric TEE transducers, small babies have been impossible to image during critical cardiac catheterization or surgical procedures. As a result, high-risk procedures have been done routinely on these tiny patients without transesophageal echocardiography images available to the interventionalist or surgeon.

"The microTEE probe is a major advance in our ability to provide intra-operative cardiac imaging in newborn babies and infants,” said Dr. Girish Shirali, M.D., director of pediatric echocardiography at Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) Children’s Hospital. “We are delighted with the image quality, and the miniaturization of the probe has already proven invaluable to our pediatric interventionalists in high-risk cath lab procedures. Finally, our smallest and sickest patients can be imaged intra-operatively just like everyone else.”

source: Philips