March 18, 2020 — A groundbreaking new study led by University of Minnesota Twin Cities researchers from both the College of Science and Engineering and the Medical School shows for the first time that lab-created heart valves implanted in young lambs for a year were capable of growth within the recipient. The valves also showed reduced calcification and improved blood flow function compared to animal-derived tissue valves currently used when tested in the same growing lamb model.

March 18, 2021 — GE Healthcare this week unveiled Vscan Air, a cutting-edge, wireless pocket-sized ultrasound that provides crystal clear image quality, whole-body scanning capabilities, and intuitive software — all in the palm of clinicians’ hands.

March 18, 2021 — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cleared Boston Scientific's TheraSphere Y-90 Glass Microspheres, an interventional radiology therapy developed for the transcatheter treatment of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). 

Integrating data from an array of implantable EP devices from different vendors can be difficult or require disconnected silos of data for different vendors. One solution that was recently introduced to integrate data from various vendors is the Optimize EP software, which allows viewing data from all device vendors in one platform to streamline workflows.

A few weeks ago, a patient of mine experienced a cardiac event — his heart stopped. Completely. However, his implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) did exactly what it was designed to do — it shocked him and it saved his life. There was just one problem, my patient had no idea that his heart had stopped or that he had been shocked because he was asleep. 

March 17, 2021 — Around 50% of patients who have been hospitalized with severe COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) and have damage to their hearts with elevated troponin levels and ischemia and coronary blocks shown on imaging.

After covering cardiovascular technologies for 14 years, it is rare that I find a new technology that might actually be a paradigm shift in cardiology. Most new devices I see are just refined iterations of existing devices, or the vendor added a new button or set of measurement tools. However, I do occasionally find a true gem while sitting in on hours of new technology sessions at conferences, or while wandering the expo floors. 

Cloud AI software-as-a-service (SaaS) can help streamline workflows and increase throughput, enabling echocardiographers to better measure global longitudinal strain (GLS) more routinely without impacting productivity. This is an example of the Ultromics EchoGo Core artificial intelligence algorithm with fully automates GLS.

Heart failure (HF) is a prevalent yet silent epidemic, affecting 26 million people and costing global healthcare systems an estimated $65 billion every year. While heart attacks are often sudden and can be symptomatic, heart failure is often considered a silent killer as it can build silently over time and treatment is often delayed to when the systolic burden has been compromised beyond reprieve.
Example of an angioplasty balloon catheter being expanded inside an artery to push atherosclerotic plaque and thrombus out of the way to reopen the vessel lumen to increase or reopen bloodflow. Balloon catheters are used to revascularize patients with heart attacks and to deploy stents to prop open the expended vessel.

The first devices developed for interventional cardiology were percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA) balloon catheters to reopen coronary arteries. Forty years later, they remain a primary workhorse device in percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI). While stents have taken the limelight in terms of the primary focus in PCI, balloons are still the method used to initially revascularize the vessel and to expend the stents into position.
A study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis provides evidence that the coronavirus can invade and replicate inside heart muscle cells, causing cell death and interfering with heart muscle contraction. The image of engineered heart tissue shows human heart muscle cells (red) infected with COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) (green). Image by Lina Greenberg.

March 12, 2021 — Since early in the pandemic, COVID-19 has been associated with heart problems, including reduced ability to pump blood and abnormal heart rhythms. But it has been an open question whether these problems are caused by the virus infecting the heart, or an inflammatory response to viral infection elsewhere in the body. Such details have implications for understanding how best to treat coronavirus infections that affect the heart.

March 12, 2021 — Philips Healthcare announced the final, five-year results of two major randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that show no difference in all-cause mortality between patients treated with the Stellarex drug-coated balloon (DCB) and those treated with percutaneous angioplasty (PTA), the current standard of care. Moreover, the studies showed no difference in mortality between the Stellarex DCB and PTA at every 12-month endpoint over the course of the study.

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