A hospital system in North Carolina launched on March 26 the first Federal Aviation Administration-sanctioned program allowing drones to make routine commercial package deliveries. Blood samples will be flown one-third of a mile from one WakeMed Health and Hospitals facility to another building on its Raleigh campus at least 30 times per week, the Associated Press reported.

While accident victims in the U.S. are uniformly taken directly to the most advanced trauma center nearby, the protocols for where to shuttle stroke patients vary widely by state, according to a recent article by Stateline.

The FDA’s preliminary investigation into the long-term safety of paclitaxel-coated balloons and stents revealed those devices are associated with a 50 percent higher risk of death than control devices used to treat femoropopliteal artery disease.

Air pollution could be contributing to twice as many deaths as previously estimated, according to research published in the European Heart Journal. Cardiovascular disease often deals the final blow, with CVD events accounting for 40 to 80 percent of these deaths.

The Early Bird Bleed Monitoring System, which can detect internal bleeding during endovascular procedures, has been granted de novo classification by the FDA. The approval was announced March 5 by Saranas, the device’s manufacturer.

Despite living in a country with universal healthcare, Canadians residing in rural areas have more vascular risk factors and a higher incidence of stroke, even after adjusting for comorbidities and sociodemographic conditions.

A small-scale study out of Germany has concluded thrombectomy—an already proven treatment for large intracranial vessel occlusions in adults—is also safe in children.

When endovascular thrombectomy procedures for acute ischemic stroke take more than an hour or require more than three attempts to remove the clot, outcomes significantly worsen, according to a study published Feb. 25 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.