Caution should be exercised when comparing a new product on the market with an old one. For example, a new car model shouldn’t be touted as "the Ford Edsel of the new millennium." It was no accident that the front grilles of the short-lived Edsels and the often horrified expressions on their owners’ faces reminded us of Edvard Munch’s 1893 painting, "The Scream." A similar negative association came up recently when a new surgical device was referred to by the media as "support hose for the heart." According to The Wall Street Journal, "The Corcap, made by Acorn Cardiovascular, is a fabric mesh device that is implanted around the heart to support the muscle." Support hose became a natural comparison when describing the new device. Regardless of the success rate of the new heart sock, the negative associations with support hose will not be kicked off easily. In fact, women might carry the association one step further. Support hose. Support pantyhose. It’s an unpleasant leap. For many women, wearing pantyhose, support style or not, can be a positive experience. They make legs look smooth and flawless. Unlike the Corcap, which is designed to keep hearts beating, truly effective pantyhose should be heart-stopping. The exceptions with pantyhose are those that we can’t forget and tend to haunt us forever. One of the drawbacks to wearing pantyhose is the possibility of having a run. Runs, which are appropriately named because they can race in a southerly direction from the waistband or spiral upward from the toes, can be stopped in their tracks with small dabs of clear fingernail polish. The same can’t be said of a run which might develop in CorCap’s fabric mesh. Even a fairly wide paint brush, dipped in a pail of varnish and smeared over the heart area of a person’s chest, wouldn’t do much good in a similar situation. In addition, lugging around a gallon of shellac and a paintbrush would be much less convenient than tossing an emergency bottle of fingernail polish into a purse. From time to time, support pantyhose will develop blow-outs. That’s when a small hole in the stocking, usually on a tightly bound thigh, will mushroom into a large gaping crater. The body fat beneath the surface of the pantyhose, yearning to be free like so many early immigrants to Ellis Island, will burst through the surface and form an unsightly, conspicuous bulge. To an untrained eye in a grocery store, it might appear that a woman with such a suspicious bulge under her skirt might be shoplifting a smoked ham. Similar blow-outs with a CorCap could create unsightly bulges on people’s chests. Support stockings are difficult to keep in place. With worn out, tired elastic waistbands, they are nomadic by nature. They tend to slip down to the widest part of a woman’s hips, inch uncontrollably down her thighs, and eventually form a circulation-stifling tourniquet at her knees. Support stocking slippage is easier to remedy on legs. If a CorCap begins to shift and feel uncomfortable, there can be no pulling a car over to the side of the road and removing the offensive stocking. The promoters of CorCap should take these negative comparisons with support hose to heart.