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WASHINGTON Neither snow nor tropical storms can stop officials at the FDA from speaking to physicians when given the chance. That was the scenario at the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics symposium in September as the 10,000 attendees noticeably dwindled near the end of the meeting as Hurricane Isabel forced the District of Columbia to shutter its windows and doors.
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LAS VEGAS, Nevada Vascular surgery has historically been characterized by a cautious attitude toward new procedures. But the trend toward a minimally invasive approach that has impacted many other areas of medicine is emerging as a force in changing the practice of vascular medicine. The merits of new interventional approaches to vascular medicine were the subject of several informative talks at the Vascular Interventional Advances (VIVA) conference, held here last month.
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WASHINGTON Physicians with an ownership interest in specialty hospitals could be barred from referring patients to these facilities if a bipartisan amendment gets added to the final Medicare prescription drug benefit legislation. The amendment, sponsored by Sens. John Breaux (D-Louisiana), Don Nickles (R-Oklahoma), and Blanche Lincoln (D-Arkansas), got a boost late last month with a General Accounting Office (GAO; Washington) report that confirmed what the senators suspect: specialty hospitals such as those focused on cardiovascular care negatively impact services provided by general hospitals.
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CalbaTech (Irvine, California), which is focused on acquiring, incubating and developing early stage life science companies, reported that it has acquired intellectual property relating to the delivery of stem cells to diseased or dead areas of the heart.
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The FDA in late October issued a public health notification reporting a variety of adverse events associated with use of the very first drug-eluting stent commercialized in the U.S., the Cypher, made and distributed by the Cordis (Miami Lakes, Florida) subsidiary of Johnson and Johnson (New Brunswick, New Jersey).
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Advances in Cardiovascular Technology: Emerging Markets for the 21st Century, Vol. 2, the newest sourcebook from the publishers of Cardiovascular Device Update and The BBI Newsletter, has just been released.
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While there is certainly no crystal ball to see who is most likely to have a heart attack, the Cleveland Clinic (Cleveland, Ohio) has developed a new blood test that may be one approach to doing so and could become a standard in emergency rooms and primary care offices.
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Daniel Cher, MD, has been named to the newly created post of medical director at Cardima (Fremont, California). He previously served as managing scientist at Exponent Failure Analysis. Cardima has developed the Revelation Tx, Revelation T-Flex and Revelation Helix linear ablation microcatheter systems for the minimally invasive treatment of atrial fibrillation.
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St. Jude Medical (Minneapolis, Minnesota) reported receiving FDA approval and European CE marking, as well as the first implant of its Atlas Plus implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD), which it said is the highest-output (36 joules delivered/42 joules stored) rate-adaptive device on the market. High-energy outputs are particularly helpful for patients who have life-threatening high or rising defibrillation thresholds, the company said.
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