Therapeutic hypothermia helps reduce neurologic deficits in those resuscitated from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. However, many questions remain regarding optimal delivery. Six U.S. heart centers will add to the growing body of evidence as they join an international registry.

High heart rate is a risk factor in heart failure (HF), and selective lowering of heart rates with ivabradine improves cardiovascular outcomes in HF, based on results from two arms of the SHIFT trial, presented at the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) congress this week in Stockholm, and simultaneously published in the Lancet. However, an accompanying editorial suggests that these findings do not yet warrant a paradigm shift.

As people age, their stem cells also age, diminishing their functionality. Many studies conducted to determine the efficacy of cardiac stem cell therapy have used donor cells from younger patients. These cells are healthy and readily adopt the cardiogenic phenotype in which researchers are interested. The problem with that approach, however, is that in clinical trials, researchers want to use patients stem cells, but they cant expect to have similar results as with younger donor cells. The answer is to find a way to manipulate autologous cells so they regain their youthful function.

Medical device company Zoll Medical has selected Analog Devices' iMEMS technology to enable PocketCPR, Zolls palm-sized CPR device, to measure the rate and depth of chest compressions administered by rescuers.

For certain subsets of patients--those at an intermediate risk for cardiovascular (CV) disease and who have low LDL cholesterol levels and elevated high-sensitivity C-reactive proteins (hsCRP)--the use of rosuvastatin (Crestor, AstraZeneca) significantly decreases CV risk, according to the results of a substudy of the JUPITER trial published in the September edition of Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality Outcomes.

AGA Medical Holdings has filed a patent infringement suit against W.L. Gore & Associates, alleging that Gore infringed upon its No. 5,994,738 patent covering its Amplatzer transcatheter occlusion devices used to treat structural heart defects.

Impax Laboratories is challenging patents listed by MSP Singapore that surround the lipid-lowering drug Vytorin, and has filed an abbreviated new drug application to the FDA that contains language seeking to certify a generic version of the drug.

After much debate on whether or not diabetes drug rosiglitazone (Avandia, GlaxoSmithKline) should be pulled from the shelves due to its potential to cause increased cardiovascular risk in patients, results of a recent study haveshown that the risk of MI, heart failure or death in patients administered either rosiglitazone or pioglitazone (Actos, Takeda) were similar--almost 4 percent.