A screening program for top teen soccer players in England identified heart disorders associated with sudden cardiac death in one out of every 266 individuals. But among the eight athletes who eventually died of sudden cardiac arrest, six of them had normal electrocardiographic and echocardiographic findings.

Medtronic has launched the pilot study of its extravascular implantable cardioverter defibrillator (EV ICD), which is designed to deliver defibrillation and antitachycardia pacing without transvenous leads.

Atrial fibrillation (AFib) and atrial flutter (AFL) are often regarded as interchangeable when informing the management of stroke risk. However, a new study in JAMA Network Open suggests clinical outcomes are worse for patients with AFib, even if they have the same values on the standard CHA2DS2-VASc scoring system.

A New Jersey cardiologist specializing in electrophysiology was sentenced July 31 to 20 months in prison for billing the Veterans Affairs (VA) program hundreds of thousands of dollars for services he never performed.

A calcium-channel blocker delivered as a nasal spray rapidly restored individuals with paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia (SVT) to normal sinus rhythm in a phase 2 study, raising the possibility that the drug could be self-administered in a real-world setting and prevent trips to the emergency department.

Epinephrine doses administered by paramedics significantly improved the odds of 30-day survival for patients following out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA), according to a randomized, placebo-controlled trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The survivors who received epinephrine, however, had worse neurological outcomes.

Asthma and uncontrolled asthma are associated with a 38 percent increased risk of developing atrial fibrillation (AFib), according to new research published in JAMA Cardiology.

Improving the use of ICDs will involve discerning appropriate from inappropriate shocks, standardizing post-shock protocols and refining device programming.