Obesity and the illnesses associated with it cost the U.S. some 90.7 billion dollars a year in health care costs, a University of Pennsylvania researcher said.
Among developed countries, the U.S. has the most obese and overweight people, representing 66 percent of its overall population.

A new program designed to provide hospitals with practical tools to help them reduce door-to-balloon times in STEMI patients is in the works, and experts who have collaborated on the project say they hope to launch it next month. Spearheaded in part by investigators who have worked on previous Guidelines Applied in Practice (GAP) studies or on door-to-balloon-time research and in part by the American College of Cardiology (ACC), the D2B: An Alliance for Quality initiative is still being finalized but has already prompted calls from hospitals and physicians hoping to sign up.

The new Fetch Aspiration Catheter from Possis Medical, Inc. has received 510(k) clearance from the FDA. Employing catheter technology from the company’s AngioJet Rheolytic Thrombectomy System, the Fetch catheter gives physicians another alternative for the aspiration of small, fresh blood clots (thrombus) and other embolic debris from arteries.

A test designed to measure the durability of CoreValve’s ReValving device reached 200 million cycles, the company has reported. CoreValve’s chairman, CEO and founder, Dr. Jacques Seguin, says initial findings indicate its proprietary porcine pericardium aortic heart valve behaves, in vitro, better than tissue valves.

First U.S. installations of Volcano Corp.’s s5i IVUS (intravascular ultrasound) imaging system have been completed at: Columbia Presbyterian in New York, NY; Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, CA; Providence Hospital in Columbia, SC; and UNC in Chapel Hill, NC.

IVUS integration has also taken place at smaller community hospitals including Katherine Shaw Bethea in Dixon, IL, Western Medical in Anaheim, CA, and Valley View Hospital in Glenwood Springs, CO.