Editor's Note US News & World Report on July 28 released its 2019-2020 Best Hospitals Honor Roll. The top five are: Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota Cleveland Clinic Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore New York-Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia and Cornell, New York City, and UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles (tie) Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston…
Editor's Note This study found reduced cardiac surgery activity, redeployed personnel, and curtailed educational and research activities in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Survey respondents from 60 cardiac surgery centers in 19 countries said they had reduced their cardiac surgical procedures by an average of 50% to 75% in response…
Editor's Note As hospitals face a surge of COVID-19 patients, the ability for them to care for trauma cases and medical and surgical emergencies is severely compromised. Because of this, the American College of Surgeons (ACS) on April 7 issued a statement calling for strategies to preserve capacity and capability…
Editor's Note Specialists like cardiac and orthopedic surgical teams as well as anesthesiologists and cardiologists are being redeployed in hospitals to help treat the rising number of COVID-19 patients, the March 30 Modern Healthcare reports. What used to be the heart team at Manhattan’s Mount Sinai Morningside is now a…
Editor's Note This study of Medicare patients at 340 teaching hospitals and matched patient controls at 2,444 nonteaching hospitals found that as risk of mortality increased, the mortality benefit of treatment at teaching hospitals also increased, though with marginally higher costs. Included in the analysis were 86,751 pairs of general,…
Editor's Note The Food & Drug Administration on February 19 identified the recall by Abbott Vascular of its NC Trek RX and NC Traveler RX Coronary Dilatation Catheters (diameter 4.0 mm, 4.5 mm, and 5.00 mm) as Class I, the most serious. The recall was initiated because of failure of…
Editor's Note The Joint Commission announced February 19 that the Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital in Fort Worth has been awarded the first Primary Heart Attack Center (PHAC) certification by the Joint Commission and American Heart Association. The certification standardizes and improves coordinated systems of care for identification, assessment, monitoring,…
Editor's Note The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) on February 7 authorized marketing of software to assist in the acquisition of cardiac ultrasound images. The software, named “Caption Guidance,” uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help capture images of a patient’s heart from different angles, which are used to diagnose various…
Editor's Note The use of an intravascular microaxial left ventricular assist device (LVAD) vs an intra-aortic balloon pump (IABP) in patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) complicated by cardiogenic shock was associated with worse in-hospital clinical outcomes in this study. Of 3,360 propensity-matched patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention for AMI,…
Editor's Note The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on December 17 identified the recall by Cook Medical of its CrossCath Support Catheters as Class I, the most serious. The recall was initiated because of a manufacturing error that may cause the radiopaque marker bands on the catheters to dislodge or…