Cardiac Pathways Corp. Installs Realtime Position Management Tracking System and Chilli Catheters At World-Renowned Cleveland Clinic.

Business Editors & Health/Medical Writers

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BW HealthWire)--Jan. 30, 2001

Cardiac Pathways Corporation, a leader in state-of-the-art 3D cardiac mapping and ablation technology (NASDAQ: CPWY), today announced it has installed its innovative Chilli(R) Cooled Ablation Catheters and Realtime Position Management (RPM)(TM) Tracking System in the world-renowned Cleveland Clinic.

Physicians at the Ohio-based hospital's Heart Center, ranked "Best in Cardiac Care" for six consecutive years by U.S. News and World Report, perform radiofrequency catheter ablation procedures in patients with abnormal heart rhythms for whom drug therapy, or implantable cardiac defibrillators, are not appropriate. In cardiac ablation procedures, electrophysiologists create lesions via a catheter to the heart tissue thought responsible for the rhythm disturbance

Dr. Mark Niebauer, an electrophysiologist on staff at Cleveland Clinic, said he has used the RPM Tracking System on patients who presented with arrhythmias such as ventricular tachycardia and atrial flutter.

Niebauer said recent advances in catheter ablation technology, such as being able to view catheters in three dimensions, may help doctors find arrhythmias faster, thus expediting procedure times while reducing physicians' and patients' exposure to radiation used in fluoroscopy.

The Chilli Cooled Ablation Catheter is the only FDA-approved catheter to ablate non-idiopathic ventricular tachycardia. The catheter's closed-path fluid circulation controls excessive heating of the catheter tip during energy ablation delivery.

The RPM System allows physicians to view both therapeutic and diagnostic catheters in three dimensions and real time, offering the potential for reduction in procedure times.

The RPM system can be used with standard diagnostic catheters to display and process intracardiac electrograms. However, when used with Cardiac Pathways' line of RPM navigation and ablation catheters, the system provides three-dimensional graphic displays that track real-time catheter positions and closely associate all electrograms from these catheters with 3D locations. With this association, activation times for up to six electrogram signals can be collected and placed on a deformable heart model that is representative of heart wall positions derived from catheter positions. These advanced navigation and mapping tools are believed to be essential in improving the process of locating positions in the heart to apply ablative therapy.

The Cleveland Clinic is the latest in a growing list of top cardiac hospitals using Cardiac Pathways products. Among the others are the Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore, Austin Heart Hospital in Texas, Sparrow Health System in Michigan as well as several others in the United States. A number of hospitals in Europe also use the products.

About Cardiac Pathways

Cardiac Pathways develops, manufactures and markets minimally invasive systems to diagnose and treat cardiac tachyarrhythmias (abnormally rapid heart rhythms). The company is a pioneer and leader in the development of complete integrated mapping and ablation systems for the diagnosis and treatment of heart rhythm disturbances.

About Cleveland Clinic

The Cleveland Clinic Foundation, founded in 1921, integrates clinical and hospital care with research and education in a private, non-profit group practice. Approximately 1,100 full-time salaried physicians at the Cleveland Clinic and Cleveland Clinic Florida, representing more than 100 medical specialties and subspecialties, provided care through more than 1.7 million outpatient visits and 50,000 hospital admissions in 1999 for patients from throughout the United States and more than 80 countries.

With more than 3,000 available beds, the Cleveland Clinic Health System, formed in 1996, offers broad geographic coverage and a full continuum of high quality care. It includes The Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Cleveland Clinic Florida, a multi-specialty group practice and hospital, and the Cleveland Clinic Children's Hospital for Rehabilitation. The Cleveland Clinic Health System also includes ten respected community-based providers: Ashtabula County Medical Center and Euclid, Fairview, Grace, Hillcrest, Huron, Lakewood, Lutheran, Marymount and South Pointe hospitals

Statements included in this release that are not historical or current are "forward-looking statements" made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. The risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to the Company's ability to gain market acceptance of the Company's products, the Company's ability to successfully obtain regulatory clearance or approvals to market its products, the ability of the Company to cost effectively manufacture and distribute products in commercial quantities, whether the RPM Tracking System and Chillirpm cooled ablation catheter will be commercially adopted by physicians, whether RPM technology complements existing and emerging treatment modalities and the Company's ability to effectively compete in the field of electrophysiology against its competitors, many of which have substantially greater financial and other resources.