March 12, 2010 – In partnership with the American College of Cardiology (ACC), Philips is spotlighting the growing need for hybrid cath labs with a specialty exhibit during ACC 2010 March 14-16 in Atlanta.

Vytorin is a medicine used to lower levels of total cholesterol, LDL (bad) cholesterol, and fatty substances called triglycerides in the blood. The prescription-only medication is intended for patients who cannot control their cholesterol levels by diet and exercise alone.

March 10, 2010 - To help clinicians communicate about radiation dose exposure during radiological procedures, a new dose-saving solution for use in interventional radiology procedures is now available.

Unlike the most common cholesterol-lowering medicines, statins, that work mainly in the liver, a new drug attempts to fight cholesterol by focusing on the digestive tract.

An FDA-approved, cholesterol-lowering medication has been proven to significantly reduce the risk of heart attack, stroke, certain kinds of heart surgeries and chest pain.


Lowering radiation dose and improving navigation abilities of angiography systems have been among the top priorities of manufactures over the past year. Another big trend is integration of angiography systems in hybrid cath lab/operating rooms (ORs) as collaboration between surgeons and interventionalists improves with increasingly less-invasive procedures.


Editor’s note: Jerome Granato, M.D., is the medical director of the coronary care unit at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pa. His facility started looking at ways to cut its nosocomial infection rates several years ago. This issue has a broader importance today, with CMS now cutting reimbursements for hospital-acquired infections and other “never events.”

The FDA’s approval of the Melody valve is widely viewed as a positive sign that may help other transcatheter valves to follow.

The FDA recently gave market clearance for Medtronic’s Melody Transcatheter Pulmonary Valve, the first transcatheter valve approved in the United States. The cardiology community expects this to be the first of many transcatheter valves to come, which are predicted to replace open-heart surgery with much less-invasive cath lab procedures.

March 10, 2010 - The third annual Workstation Face-Off at the 22nd European Congress of Radiology, held in Vienna, Austria, and hosted by radiologists Anno Graser M.D., and Christoph Becker, M.D., of the Ludwig-Maximillians University in Munich, featured two challenging cases involving oncology and perfusion imaging and analysis with CT and PET, for three sequential timepoints.

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