The Department of Justice (DoJ) has charged Guidant, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Boston Scientific, with covering-up device failure problems associated with its Ventak Prizm 2 DR and Contak Renewal implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICD).
Many more people could survive out-of-hospital cardiac arrest if regional systems of cardiac resuscitation care were established, according to an American Heart Association (AHA) policy statement published Jan. 14 in Circulation.
The chance of surviving an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest at work or in the home has not improved since the 1950s, according to a report published online Nov. 10 in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.
Research presented at the 2009 American Heart Association (AHA) scientific sessions in Orlando based on the subanalysis from the ADMIRE-HF phase III clinical trial suggested that imaging of the cardiac sympathetic nerves using the molecular imaging agent 123I-meta-iodobenzylguanidine (123I-MIBG, AdreView; GE Healthcare) may be useful in the assessment of risk for cardiac arrhythmias and cardiac death.
Orlando, Fla.—European researchers found that a trans-nasal cooling approach that lowers body temperature while cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is performed can be used effectively in the pre-hospital setting and appears to improve outcomes, based on the PRINCE study presented at the 2009 American Heart Association conference.
Patients in the off-pump group had worse composite outcomes and poorer graft patency compared with patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) with the use of a cardiopulmonary bypass machine at one year of follow up, according to a study in Thursday’s issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
SAN FRANCISCO—In PROSPECT, the first prospective, natural history trial of atherosclerosis using multimodality imaging to characterize the coronary tree, researchers found that about 20 percent of patients with acute coronary syndromes successfully treated with stents and medical therapy develop at least one major coronary event within three years, with adverse events equally attributable to recurrence at originally treated culprit lesions and to previously untreated non-culprit coronary segments.
The chance that a person in cardiac arrest will survive increases when rescuers doing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) spend more time giving chest compressions, according to a multi-center study reported Sept. 14 in Circulation.
Local policies and public perception about termination of resuscitation (TOR) guidelines often hinder adoption and implementation of national consensus guidelines for dealing with refractory out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. Researchers from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and Emory University in Atlanta have identified four national organization that can help overcome local and lay-public resistance to more effective use of EMS personnel when dealing with unsuccessful treatment out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.
Traditional hospital factors--such as case volume and academic status--do not appear to predict whether patients with cardiac arrest at that facility are likely to experience delays in receiving defibrillation, according to a large registry study in the July 27 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.
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Written by C.P. Kaiser
With a more sophisticated understanding of sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) and improved technology, the field of resuscitative medicine is moving forward at a rapid clip. The missing piece to the puzzle, however, is getting more automated external defibrillators (AEDs) into more public spaces, coupled with education and training.
The chance of surviving a cardiac arrest outside a hospital was found to be twice as high when bystanders performed continuous chest compressions without mouth-to-mouth breathing than when bystanders performed standard CPR. These are the latest findings reported by the Resuscitation Research Group at the University of Arizona Sarver Heart Center and the SHARE Program (Save Hearts in Arizona Research and Education) at the Arizona Department of Health Services.
Patients with an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest who received IV drug administration during treatment, recommended in life support guidelines, had higher rates of short-term survival but no statistically significant improvement in survival to hospital discharge or long-term survival, compared to patients who did not receive IV drug administration, according to a study in the Nov. 25 issue of Journal of the American Medical Association.
The FDA has warned that sibutamine (Meridia; Abbott Laboratories), a drug used to curb obesity and enhance weight loss, could lead to an increased risk of cardiac events in patients.
A large, multicenter clinical trial comparing different resuscitation strategies, as well as the use of an impedence threshold device, has stopped enrollment, based on findings that all strategies were equally effective.
A $566,000 grant through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) has allowed researchers at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., to continue work on an optical system to simultaneously image electrical activity and metabolic properties in the same region of a heart.
Compared with white patients, black patients who have an in-hospital cardiac arrest are significantly less likely to survive to hospital discharge, having lower rates of successful resuscitation and post-resuscitation survival, although much of this survival difference was associated with the hospital in which black patients received care, based on a study in the Sept. 16 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
In a recent study, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia found that the use of cooling blankets upon arrival at the hospital for sudden cardiac arrest patients was cost effective. Cardiovascular Business News asked lead author Raina Merchant, MD, to discuss the topic.
Using a model, researchers found that cooling unconscious cardiac arrest survivors can increase survival and has cost-effectiveness comparable with other widely accepted treatments, according to a study in the Aug. 4 in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.
The FDA has granted 510(k) market clearance to Physio-Control, a wholly owned subsidiary of Medtronic, for its Lucas 2, the next-generation Lucas chest compression system.
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Middle age introduces itself in many ways; one is atrial fibrillation (AF). My onset of AF seems to have coincided with a mountain bike accident in the woods of North Carolina that resulted in some cracked ribs.
The use of health IT to reduce rehospitalizations will be welcome but also disruptive, said Stephen Jencks, an independent consultant in healthcare safety during a Feb. 24 webinar on the potential use of health IT to mitigate rehospitalizations, sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).