Abiomed, a developer of heart recovery products providing circulatory support to acute heart failure patients, trimmed losses and upped revenues for its fiscal 2009third quarter, which ended Dec. 31, 2008.

Invatec, a provider of interventional products, has entered a global distribution agreement with Lumen Biomedical to distribute the FiberNet Embolic Protection System (EPS), which is indicated for the treatment of patients receiving endovascular intervention for carotid artery disease.

Medtronic has expanded its CURE-AF [atrial fibrillation] SM clinical program with a post-market study in Europe and Canada.

The prevailing notion is that bypass surgery is superior to stenting in patients with diabetes. The truth, however, is more complicated, as the decision-makers learn to examine the individual pathologies in lieu of standardization. Often, this process is more art than science in taking into account all of the parameters of a patients disease.

If Europe is any indication of where mechanical cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is heading, interventional cardiologists in the U.S. should get ready to welcome the devices into their cath labs. European researchers have begun to validate the technique in arrested patients undergoing PCI.

GE Healthcare and Radi Medical Systems (Uppsala, Sweden) on Monday announced a development and marketing and sales initiative to integrate Radi Medical Systems PressureWire Aeris, a wireless fractional flow reserve (FFR) technology, into GEs Mac-Lab IT hemodynamic recording system.

Some research has demonstrated that performing elective percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI) in low-volume facilities, especially those without onsite cardiac surgery, can result in positive outcomes. Critics say, however, that these studies are mostly single-center investigations, which do not reflect the real risk of performing elective PCI without onsite surgical backup. In fact, critics point to studies using Medicare data, which do show an increase in mortality for patients treated at facilities without surgical backup.

Three recent clinical studies rebuke the previously held belief that drug-eluting stents (DES) led to higher rates of stent thrombosis (ST). As concerns over DES have begun to dissipate, their utilization is already increasing in the first half of 2008, and many experts think this trend will continue.