Advances in CT scanner technology have enabled patients to be imaged with very low doses of radiation exposure. Some low-dose strategies, however, accept a certain amount of noise. Workstation vendors are aiming to enhance their software to help reconstruct higher quality images.

Like every medical device seen in hospitals today, contrast media power injectors are becoming much more integrated with other devices, specifically in diagnostic and interventional cardiology.

The American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association have released a Focused Update to the Practice Guidelines based on new clinical trial data on the risks and benefits of using beta blockers to reduce cardiac events during non-cardiac surgeries. It provides specific recommendations about which patients will likely benefit from beta blockers and in which patients there is not enough evidence to recommend their use.

Compared to the general population, patients starting dialysis have an increased risk of death that is not attributable to a higher rate of death from cardiovascular causes, as previously thought, according to a study in the Oct. 28 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Shelagh B. Coutts, MD, was granted the first Distinguished Clinician Scientist 2009 award by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Institute of Circulatory and Respiratory Health and AstraZeneca Canada during the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress this week in Edmonton, Alberta.

Heart attacks have become more common in middle-aged women over the past two decades, but all women and especially those younger than 55 have recently experienced a greater increase than men in their chances of survival following such a heart event, according to two reports in the Oct. 26 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.

CardioComm Solutions has shipped its Global ECG Management System (GEMS) software as part of a multi-year North American licensing agreement with GE Healthcare, and a subsequent OEM agreement.

GE Healthcare added another notch to its partnership with Steris by receiving 510(k) clearance from the FDA to use its Innova x-ray digital angiography system to perform minimally invasive surgery, according to a company spokesperson at the 21st annual Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) conference.