Vascular closure devices have a definite niche in areas where they were not originally intended but have found frequent off-label use because of their utility.

The use of 3-D echo can help improve the accuracy and reproducibility of cardiac quantification. The technology has the advantage of removing the inter-operator variability by imaging whole volume datasets of the heart, so specific images or organ views can be extracted and reconstructed in any position, similar to CT or MRI datasets. Also, because a volumetric dataset is captured, exam times can be shortened, instead of spending time trying to get just the right angle for a 2-D slice view. Cardiac quantification can also be improved by measuring the entire heart or ventricle, rather than just slices of it. New software also automates this quantification.

The main results of the large randomized LINC study, which compared the effectiveness of the Lucas mechanical chest compression system to high quality manual chest compressions, were presented at the European Society of Cardiology Congress in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The LINC study showed similar short-term survival rates for Lucas (23.6%) and manual (23.7%) chest compressions. At six-months, 8.5% of the patients treated with LUCAS were alive with good neurological outcomes compared to 7.6% in the manual group.