Vascular & Endovascular

Rivaroxaban failed to reduce the rate of early graft failure following coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery compared to aspirin monotherapy, researchers reported in a substudy of the COMPASS trial published Jan. 14 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Long-term sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are at a higher risk for circulatory and metabolic diseases, especially if they’re men, according to research out of Siena, Italy.

The RAPID neuroimaging platform can now be used in the U.S. to select stroke patients who are likely to benefit from endovascular thrombectomy. It is the first imaging platform to be cleared by the FDA as a patient selection tool for this clot removal procedure, according to iSchemaView, which developed the technology.

Executives from Medtronic and Boston Scientific stood behind their companies’ paclitaxel-coated medical devices after a meta-analysis published in the Journal of the American Heart Association in December linked balloons and stents covered with the material to a significantly increased risk of death at two and five years of follow-up.

Participating in telemedicine for ischemic stroke care could modestly lower a hospital’s rate of tissue-type plasminogen activator (tPA)-related complications and in-hospital mortality, researchers reported in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.

Research published in Stroke Jan. 10 suggests clinicians overestimate the severity of intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) and underestimate the severity of acute ischemic stroke (AIS), resulting in a bias that could influence patients’ outcomes and treatment plans.

Survivors of heart attack, stroke and cardiac arrest are not only less likely to maintain a job following those events, but their earnings might take a significant hit even if they stay employed, researchers reported Jan. 7 in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

Chronic exposure to secondhand smoke in common settings like cars, homes and casinos may increase a person’s susceptibility to cardiac alternans, a precursor to ventricular arrhythmias, according to an animal study published in Environmental Health Perspectives.

About one-quarter of adults in the world will experience a stroke in their lifetime, according to new estimates from the Global Burden of Disease Study published online Dec. 20 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

About 1 in 6 patients with newly diagnosed atrial fibrillation (AFib) who are considered at low risk of stroke advance to a higher risk category within one year, according to a registry study published in the Jan. 1 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine.

A 34-year-old stroke patient was stuck with a bill for nearly a half-million dollars after taking a flight from Wichita, Kansas, to Boston to see a neurosurgeon.

Patients with diabetes and peripheral artery disease (PAD) are significantly more likely than nondiabetics with PAD to die from cardiovascular causes or have a heart attack or stroke, according to a subanalysis of the EUCLID trial.