Cath lab staff working as a team to prepare for a procedure at Presbyterian Medical Center Cardiac Cath Lab, Charlotte N.C. Pictured are Barry Horsey RCIS, Emily Luna RN, RCIS, Adam Martin RCIS, Caleadia Jessup RN.
Cath lab techs and nurses working as a team to prepare a hybrid OR at the University of Colorado Hospital for a MitraClip procedure. Recruiting and retaining good cath lab staff, nurses and tech can be a difficult job.

One of the most promising areas for innovation in healthcare is to be found in the workforce – both in hiring and retention. But for years, healthcare has endured high turnover, and the trend seems to be accelerating. According to a study by National Healthcare Retention and RN Staffing Report,[1] the average hospital turnover rate in 2017 was 18.2 percent, the highest recorded turnover in the industry for almost a decade. Since 2013, the average hospital turned over 85.2 percent of its workforce.

Coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) surgery may be the best treatment option for most patients with more than one blocked heart artery, according to research published online in The Annals of Thoracic Surgery.

One innovation in ECG is its use in the customer wearable market, which will tie more closely into the clinical world either with using the data to triage patients and/or patients seeking medical attention prior to acute symptoms appearing.

Technology has made its way into the healthcare sector and brought a drastic transformation. Detection of heart conditions that was not possible before has become possible. With surge in heart conditions across the world, it is essential to detect them as soon as possible. Innovative methods and devices have been developed for prolonging and saving lives of people through detection of heart conditions. 

A discussion with Khaldoon Alaswad, M.D., director, cardiac catheterization lab, Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit on treating chronic total occlusions (CTOs) and other complex PCI cases. Alaswad is an expert in complex and high-risk patients (CHIP) involved in coronary CTOs and is a frequest speaker at CTO seminars.

Concept Medical Inc. (CMI) has been granted Breakthrough Device Designation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for MagicTouch, its sirolimus drug-coated balloon (DCB) catheter, for the treatment of coronary in-stent restenosis (ISR).

Medtronic announced the company has received U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for the CareLink SmartSync Device Manager. With the introduction of SmartSync, physicians will now be able to use an Apple iPad to program and manage data from Medtronic's BlueSync-enabled implanted cardiac devices.

Abiomed announced that, on April 26, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved initiation of the ST-Elevation Myocardial Infarction Door-to-Unloading (STEMI DTU) Pivotal Randomized Controlled Trial. The prospective, multi-center, two-arm trial plans to enroll 668 patients undergoing treatment for a STEMI heart attack. Half the patients will be randomized to receive delayed reperfusion after 30 minutes of left ventricular unloading with the Impella CP. The other half will receive immediate reperfusion, the current standard of care.

This podcast is a discussion with William O'Neill, M.D., director of the structural heart program, Henry Ford Hospital, and Michele Voeltz, M.D., fellowship program director, interventional cardiology at Henry Ford Hospital. They explain their process for selecting various levels of hemodynamic support, including the TandemHeart system, Abiomed Impella and ECMO.

As interventional procedures become more complex, one of the biggest issues is the ability of operators to see the devices they are using in the soft tissue anatomy that is mostly invisible under 2-D fluoroscopy. Several companies have developed new navigation aids, including multimodality fusion imaging software from Philips, GE and Siemens. This image shows a new system being developed by Centerline Biomedical. There is a more detailed image below.

When Andreas Grüntzig, father of percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty, approached his cardiac surgeon colleague Åke Senning for support in applying newly-developed angioplastic techniques to the coronary arteries, Dr.
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