Medical Updates
08/31/2010
New Pathway to the Heart
By Todd Ackerman, Houston Chronicle
In a possible new way to treat heart failure, Houston surgeons implanted a device and wire in a Pearland man Monday that will electrically stimulate portions of his spinal cord.
08/31/2010
Questions Loom Over Drug Given to Sleepless Vets
By Matthew Perronne, Associated Press
Andrew White returned from a nine-month tour in Iraq beset with signs of post-traumatic stress disorder: insomnia, nightmares, constant restlessness. Doctors tried to ease his symptoms using three psychiatric drugs, including a potent anti-pyschotic called Seroquel.
08/23/2010
Cedars-Sinai Opens Doors of Advanced Heart Failure Unit
By Editorial Staff, Cardiovascular Business
The Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles will provide a team-based approach to managing and treating heart failure with its 350-bed in-patient advanced heart failure unit.
07/20/2010
Circulation: Exercise training for HF patients shifts costs to patients
CardiovascularBusiness
The cost of exercise training was relatively low for the healthcare system, but patients incurred significant time costs, based on an economic sub-study of HF-ACTION, published online June 15 in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes. In this economic evaluation, the researchers said there was little systematic benefit in terms of overall medical resource use with this intervention.
07/20/2010
Cholesterol Screening Rates Too Low in Young U.S. Adults: CDC
HealthDay News
Only about half of young adults in the United States undergo cholesterol screening, even though up to one-quarter of them have elevated levels of "bad" cholesterol, a new study has found.
07/19/2010
JACC: 'Wearable' ICDs prevent sudden death
CardiovascularBusiness
Although compliance is slightly more than 50 perecent, patients who wear the cardioverter-defibrillator vest have a high survival rate, similar to that of ICD patients, according to a study in the July 13 edition of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
06/09/2010
Common Painkillers Raise Heart Death Risk
By Daniel J. DeNoon
High doses of common painkillers raise the risk of heart death in healthy people, a huge Danish study finds.
06/04/2010
How Tweaking Genes May Fix Broken Hearts
Preliminary Results Reveal Some Benefit for Gene Therapy to Treat Heart Failure
Replenishing the supply of a gene that controls the way heart muscle cells work appears to slow progression of heart failure, a disease that will be diagnosed in about 670,000 Americans this year.
06/04/2010
Wireless Device May Keep Heart Failure Patients Out of Hospital
Novel CardioMEMS Heart Sensor a "Grand Slam," Researchers Say
Among heart failure patients with moderate to severe disease, six months monitoring with an investigational implantable sensor that measures pulmonary artery pressure was associated with a 30 percent lower risk of ending up in the hospital for heart failure.
06/04/2010
Progress Made Against Once-Fatal Heart Defect
Implanted devices help babies survive, thrive into adulthood, study shows
A congenital heart defect that was typically fatal three decades ago is no longer so deadly, thanks to new technologies and surgical techniques that allow babies to survive well into adulthood, researchers report.
06/04/2010
Pill’s $1.3 Billion Potential Spurs Study Shortcut
By Michelle Fay Cortez
A Swedish pharmaceutical company with no products on the market is hatching a drug-testing shortcut to catapult its experimental cholesterol pill into a potential $1.3 billion-a-year seller.
06/04/2010
Surviving Cardiac Arrest Depends on Your Location
Study found death rate up to three times higher in poorer neighborhoods
A person's chances of surviving a cardiac arrest depend largely on the neighborhood in which they collapse, a new study suggests.
05/27/2010
Heart Drugs Safe for Lungs, Study Finds
By Ed Edelson
Medical tradition says that the beta blockers used to treat heart disease shouldn't be given to people who also have severe lung disease, but a new Dutch study suggests the tradition is wrong.
05/27/2010
Half of Americans With High Blood Pressure Have the Condition Under Control, but Hypertension Is on the Rise
By Daniel J. DeNoon
Half of Americans with high blood pressure now have the condition under control, but more and more Americans are coming down with the dangerous condition.
04/01/2010
New Insights Into Who's At Risk With Angioplasty
By U.S.News & World Report
Who's most at risk when undergoing the common, artery-opening procedure known as angioplasty?
01/08/2010
FDA Staff Against Wider Approval of Forest Drug
Lisa Richwine, Reuters
The Food and Drug Administration staff memo, prepared for an agency advisory panel, said "the totality of evidence is not convincing to support a claim for treatment of heart failure" with the drug, Bystolic. "Approval is not recommended" for the heart failure use, FDA reviewer Shona Pendse wrote, adding that "several critical changes" were made to the main study "that raise concerns as to the interpretability of findings." Safety data "does not reveal any specific causes for concern," Pendse said.
11/16/2009
Proposed AstraZeneca Anticlotting Drug Better Than Plavix:Study
The Wall Street Journal
An experimental anticlotting drug being developed by AstraZeneca PLC (AZN, AZN.LN) was more effective than the widely used Plavix when used before and after a procedure to open a blocked coronary artery in patients suffering a heart attack, according a new analysis scheduled to be released Sunday.
09/18/2009
Blacks Fare Worse After Cardiac Arrest
By Steven Reinberg, HealthDay News
Black patients who suffer cardiac arrest in the hospital are much less likely to survive than white patients, a new study finds.
09/10/2009
Long-Term Lead Exposure Linked to Heart Deaths: Current OSHA guidelines are probably inadequate, researchers say
Health Day
Exposure to lead over a lifetime may increase the risk of dying from heart disease, new research shows.
In the News
08/31/2010
Emergency Responders Warn AEDs Can't Save Lives Without Regular Attention
By wqow.com
08/31/2010
NY Man Dies on Flight to Milwaukee
By Associated Press
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