The US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) announced a Class 1 recall on Monday for Abbott/Thoratec Corp.’s HeartMate II and HeartMate 3 Left Ventricular Assist System (LVAS) due due to biological material buildup obstructing the devices. According to an April 16 CBS News report, surgeons first noticed problems with the…

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Editor's Note New research shows transplant center teams are more to likely reject offers of donor hearts to black men and men than black women and white women, MedPage Today reported on March 25. “The cumulative probability of a donor heart being accepted by the transplant center team was most…

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Editor's Note Although cardiac disease is the leading cause of human morbidity and mortality globally, the complexity of cardiac tissues makes monitoring difficult. To address this issue, a team from University of Massachusetts Amherst and MIT has created a bioelectronic mesh system that can measure movement of cells in cardiac…

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Editor's Note The American College of Cardiology (ACC) has introduced the CV ASC Registry Suite, a pioneering data registry targeting cardiac procedures at ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs), Cardiovascular Business February 13 reports. This initiative marks a significant development that reflects the trend of cardiac care shifting from hospitals to ASCs.…

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Editor's Note Using intravascular imaging to guide stent implantation during percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) provides significantly better outcomes than angiography, according to findings published February 21 in The Lancet. In a study of 15,964 patients undergoing PCI from 22 trials in hundreds of centers from March 2010 to August 2023,…

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Editor's Note Patients with severe cases of tricuspid regurgitation (in which a critical heart valve fails to close properly) now have a new treatment option thanks to the recent US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of the ENVOQUE tricuspid valve replacement system, according to a February 2 press release…

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Editor's Note:  Surgeons successfully tested three fixes for a leaky heart valve on a biological pig heart fitted with a silicone robotic pump, HealthDay reported on January 11. According to the article, the biorobotic heart offers significant advantages over existing heart simulators. These include a longer shelf life, greater ability…

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Editor’s Note Smartwatches can detect and diagnose irregular heart rhythms in children that standard physician monitoring may miss, Medical Xpress reports. Published on December 13 in Communications Medicine, the findings are based on a survey of 4 years’ worth of electronic medical records for pediatric cardiology patients at Stanford Medicine…

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Editor's Note A study led by researchers at Icahn School of Medicine in Mount Sinai, New York, finds use of a timed storage and dispensing device for bulk-packaged electrocardiography (ECG) electrodes significantly improves compliance. The study included seven operating rooms (ORs) that used a bin with an automated countdown timer…

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