For those living with diabetes, monitoring blood glucose accurately is necessary to prevent diabetes-related complications such as heart attacks, blindness and coma. Researchers from the University of Missouri School of Medicine and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) recently evaluated the accuracy of an MIT-developed technology to monitor blood glucose levels without needles or a finger prick. Early results show the noninvasive technology measures blood glucose levels as effectively as a finger-prick test — without drawing blood.

Health informatics company Impathiq announced its Heart Pathway point-of-care clinical decision support tool was recently featured in the American Heart Association journal Circulation. The article, “Safely Identifying Emergency Department Patients with Acute Chest Pain for Early Discharge: The HEART Pathway Accelerated Diagnostic Protocol” appeared Sept. 28 in Circulation.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) measurements of wall thickness in the carotid arteries improve cardiovascular disease risk assessment, according to a new study appearing in the journal Radiology.

Daniel J. Schimmel, Jr., M.D., MS, a cardiologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, recently performed the first balloon pulmonary angioplasty (BPA) to treat a pulmonary embolism in the state of Illinois.

A patient who received the HeartMate III LVAD system showing off his external battery pack. He served as a patient ambassador in the Abbott booth at ACC 2018. The HeartMate III, with its magnetic levitated pump, showed a big reduction in clotting over previous LVADs in a key late-breaking trial at ACC earlier this year.

October 19, 2018 — Abbott announced today that the HeartMate 3 Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD) has received U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance as a destination therapy for people living with advanced heart failure. With the approval, physicians can now offer the HeartMate 3 system to patients not eligible for a transplant who will live with their device for the rest of their lives.
A CT calcium scoring image showing calcified plaques in coronary vessel segments. The higher the calcium content of the vessels, the high risk the patient is for a heart attack event. CAC exam

A picture is worth a thousand words, and to patients concerned about their health, detailed images of the coronary anatomy can push many of them over the edge to make serious lifestyle changes or agree to start statin therapy. Computed tomography (CT) offers detailed anatomical imaging of the coronaries and low-dose CT calcium scoring scans (CAC) can offer great heart attack risk assessment tools in asymptomatic patients. 

Shimadzu Medical Systems USA and Change Healthcare have entered a partnership through which Shimadzu will offer Change Healthcare Cardiology Hemo, along with its Trinias line of angiography systems. The announcement was made at the 2018 Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) annual meeting, Sept. 21-25 in San Diego.

Medtronic is issuing a software update to address a safety risk caused by cybersecurity vulnerabilities associated with the internet connection between the Carelink 2090 and Carelink Encore 29901 programmers used to download software from the Medtronic software distribution network (SDN) . This update is a voluntary recall correction by the manufacturer to address the safety risk caused by the cybersecurity vulnerability.

October 17, 2018 — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has reviewed information about potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities associated with the internet connection of Medtronic's cardiac implantable electrophysiology device (CIED) programmers. The FDA said it has confirmed that these vulnerabilities could allow an unauthorized user to change the programmer's functionality or the implanted EP device during the device implantation procedure or during follow-up visits.

October 17, 2018 — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cleared an additional indication for rivaroxaban (Xarelto) to reduce the risk of major cardiovascular (CV) events, such as CV death, myocardial infarction (MI) and stroke, in people with chronic coronary or peripheral artery disease (CAD/PAD). The drug is now the first and only factor Xa inhibitor approved for patients living with these conditions. The drug is made by The Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson and Johnson. 

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