The FDA a firmware update to certain Abbott (formerly St. Jude Medical) implantable cardioverter-defibrillators and cardiac resynchronization therapy defibrillators with radiofrequency capabilities for home monitoring. The update, which must be done in the physician's office, addresses cybersecurity but also provides a rapid battery depletion warning by making the cardiac device vibrate.
Dabigatran (Pradaxa) reversal agent idarucizumab (Praxbind) was upgraded from accelerated approval to for patients on the anticoagulant who have life-threatening or uncontrolled bleeding or who need urgent procedures or emergency surgery. (MPR)
Women are still less likely to get after a heart attack, a MarketScan and Medicare database study found. (Journal of the American College of Cardiology)
Preventive medicine was in the spotlight at the EuroPrevent meeting in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Some of the research featured by ESCardio.org included:
- Belly fat is associated with heart risk
- Increasing was associated with lower mortality risk
- More than half of European smokers for an acute coronary event or revascularization
- Heart patients' was associated with likelihood of hospitalization
are less likely to have atrial fibrillation or heart failure, an observational study reported in Heart.
are linked to heart attack and stroke recurrence, a registry-based study reported in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology.
The AngelMed got FDA clearance based on a new retrospective analysis after the device was rejected by an advisory committee for lack of evidence of efficacy in 2016. (Mass Device)
The gained an expanded indication for long, superficial femoral artery lesions up to 360 mm in peripheral artery disease, Medtronic announced.
European regulators cleared the HeartStitch and the Shockwave S4 . (Mass Device, Chicago Evening Post)
The American Heart Association released a that suggests the days of binary "present or not" are past, and physicians now need to determine what level of Afib burden requires treatment. (Circulation)