Contact:
Marjorie Bekaert Thomas/President
mthomas@ivanhoe.com
(407) 740-0789

ORLANDO, FL (March 7, 2005) -- When you watch an episode of NBC's "ER," you may get lost in the melodramatic emergency plots, live vicariously through the intertwined relationships of co-stars, or maybe even wish you were standing over the operating table yourself as a doctor performing a life-saving procedure.

When Marjorie Bekaert Thomas watches ER, she watches for out-of-the-box production techniques she can suggest to her television news producers at Ivanhoe Broadcast News. Little did she know, the Feb. 17, 2005 episode that Thomas touted as being the most riveting ER plot she ever saw was a direct result of an exclusive news piece created by her very own producers at the syndicated medical and health news production company in Orlando, Fla., of which she is President and co-founded in 1978.

In ER episode #177865, "Alone in a Crowd," Cynthia Nixon ("Sex and the City") guest starred as a young mother who came to the emergency room with serious stroke-like symptoms. ER characters Kovac and Sam raced to save her life -- and did so with the help of the MERCI Retriever, dubbed a "corkscrew for brain clots."

Two years ago, TV producers at Ivanhoe created a real-life television news report on the exact same surgical procedure using MERCI Retriever after interviewing Reza Jahan, M.D., a neuroradiologist at UCLA.

At that time, it was a topic reported exclusively by Ivanhoe, which distributes its reports to 200 network affiliates reaching 82 million TV households across the United States. Word of the MERCI Retriever spread quickly, and soon magazines, newspapers and television organizations around the world picked up the story from UCLA. It became part the March 8, 2004 Newsweek cover story, "The War on Strokes."

"Ivanhoe broke this story," said Kevin Knight, a public relations specialist for the MERCI Retriever. He sent many thanks to Ivanhoe producers, attributing the technology's widespread coverage to the original report. Knight recently said he sent the Ivanhoe video to Warner Brothers and the video report was the only way he got the producers of ER to write and shoot this episode. "I only regret Ivanhoe didn't appear on the credits, though some is certainly deserved," Knight said.

The Retriever is a long, thin wire threaded through a catheter into the blood vessel. When it's pushed through, it reshapes itself into tiny loops, latches on, and pulls out the clot.

Dr. Jahan told Ivanhoe of the Retriever, "It's a design that works. On the one hand, you want it to be soft enough, so it is safe when you deploy this device in the blood vessels in the brain. On the other hand, you want it to be stiff enough, so that it grabs the clot and pulls it back."

He said the Retriever can be used up to eight hours into a stroke -- compared to the three-hour window required for drugs -- and may be the only option for full recovery in many stroke victims, as was the case with Nixon's character on ER.

Producing and delivering life-changing information to the world has been Thomas's passion since founding Ivanhoe with friend and business partner Bette BonFleur. They just never imagined one of their reports would be part of a major entertainment program like ER!

About the MERCI Retriever

The MERCI Retriever was still under study and not yet FDA-approved when Ivanhoe reported the story in 2003. However, the device received FDA clearance in August 2004. MERCI stands for Mechanical Embolus Removal for Cerebral Ischemia.

About Ivanhoe Broadcast News

With a client base of 200 network affiliates across the United States, Ivanhoe's medical reports are broadcast in markets reaching 82 million television households five times a week. Ivanhoe.com was launched in 1996 as a logical extension of Ivanhoe's television series, Medical Breakthroughs. Updated daily, this site features the latest advances in medicine. More than 115,000 people around the world subscribe to Ivanhoe's free weekly e-mail on medical breakthroughs. To subscribe, go to http://www.ivanhoe.com and click on the "First to Know" icon.