January 6, 2009 - Boston Scientific Corp. today said it acquired Labcoat Ltd., a privately held, development-stage drug-eluting stent technology company located in Galway, Ireland.

January 6, 2009 - Vicor Technologies received FDA 510k approval in December to market its PD2i Analyzer, which uses a patented, proprietary point correlation dimension algorithm (PD2i), a deterministic, non-linear measure that analyzes ECG data to risk stratify target populations as to future life threatening or fatal events.

Specifically, the PD2i Analyzer is said to provide physicians with insight into heart rate complexity over time.

January 6, 2009 - LightLab Imaging Inc. said the number of clinical intravascular optical coherence tomography (OCT) procedures using the company's OCT systems has surpassed 10,000.

OCT is a new high-resolution, high-speed imaging modality that uses advanced photonics for intravascular imaging and tissue characterization for diagnosis and treatment of coronary artery disease.

January 5, 2009 - Carotid endarterectomy (CEA) yields better short-term results than carotid artery stenting (CAS) in patients with carotid artery disease, according to a 30-day outcomes report from the Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS) Vascular Registry for Carotid Procedures, published in the January 2009 issue of the Journal of Vascular Surgery.

January 5, 2009 - The University of California, San Diego Medical Center is the first hospital in California to enroll patients in a multi-center clinical trial, sponsored by Angioblast Systems Inc., to examine the safety and feasibility of administering adult stems cells to treat congestive heart failure.

January 5, 2009 - Medtronic Inc. today announced the first enrollment in the company’s FDA-approved clinical trial of its self-expanding (SE) Complete SE stent for the treatment of peripheral arterial disease (PAD) in the superficial femoral artery (SFA).

January 5, 2009 - Arlington Medical Resources (AMR), a provider of market intelligence for the pharmaceutical and diagnostic imaging industries, reported that the number of micro-bubble echo contrast procedures performed in October 2008 have increased by more than 50 percent, to nearly 18,000 procedures, when compared to May 2008.

Micro-bubble echo contrast procedures began declining sharply in October 2007, from nearly 55,000 procedures in September 2007, as a result of a black box warning issued by the FDA in October 2007.

January 5, 2009 - Frost & Sullivan said it have awarded Toshiba America Medical Systems with its 2008 North American Frost & Sullivan Award for Healthcare Innovation.

NAI Tech Products’ MDR Video RP is designed for analog video recording to disk for fluoroscopy, endoscopy, ultrasound and angiography. It features a an integrated full color label printing in disk drive and can write images and viewer to disk or USB memory. The system comes in a new configuration on a cart with playback monitor and touch-screen user interface.

January 2, 2009 - An Italian study recently found dark chocolate, in moderation, may help prevent cardiovascular disease.

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