The FDA approved three St. Jude Medical pacemaker devices, including its quadripolar cardiac resynchronization therapy pacemaker.

Experiencing shortness of breath while bending forward, termed “bendopnea,” could be an indicator of heart failure, according to researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas in a study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

The Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute has set a new standard for U.S. heart transplantation by completing 117 adult heart transplants and two adult heart-lung transplants, for a total of 119 adult heart transplants in a single year. The previous number set in 2005, was 98 adult heart transplants performed in one year.

A team of cardiovascular researchers from Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham), the Cardiovascular Research Center at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and the University of California, San Diego, have identified a small but powerful new player in the onset and progression of heart failure. Their findings, published in the journal Nature on March 12, also show how they successfully blocked the newly discovered culprit to halt the debilitating and chronic life-threatening condition in its tracks.

Trials of new glucose-lowering drugs should consider hospitalization for heart failure as an outcome, according to a Personal View article published online March 13 in The Lancet. The authors argued that heart failure has not received much attention as an outcome in clinical trials of these drugs, but results have associated them with an increased risk of heart failure.

Patients with heart failure who receive therapy consisting of an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) and cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) have fewer hospitalizations than heart failure patients with only an ICD. The findings, published online March 7 in Circulation, were based on data from the Resynchronization-Defibrillation for Ambulatory Heart Failure Trial (RAFT).

An analysis of HeartMate II left ventricular assist devices (LVADs) published in the March 11 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found that preoperative risk factors for bleeding and thrombotic events vary depending on patient demographics, including age, sex, body mass index and the cause of heart failure.

Christiana Care Health System is one of 15 hospitals selected out of 132 eligible hospitals nationwide by the American College of Cardiology to participate in a new program designed to keep patients healthy at home after discharge from the hospital.