A large clinical trial that compared extended-release niacin and laropiprant plus statin therapy with statin therapy alone was halted because it failed to meet its primary endpoint.

The FDA is informing healthcare professionals and the public that the anticoagulant dabigatran (Pradaxa, Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals) should not be used to prevent stroke or major thromboembolic events in patients with mechanical heart valves, or mechanical prosthetic heart valves.

A study of in-hospital cardiac arrest survival rates in children found that hospitals participating in the Get With the Guidelines-Resuscitation (GWTG-Resuscitation) program have improved overall survival rates threefold over the past 10 years, without worsened neurological outcome among survivors. The overall survival rate remains under 50 percent, however. The study was published online Dec. 18 in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.

Earlier this month, analysts at Fitch Ratings shared information that informed their outlook on the fiscal health of nonprofit hospitals and health systems in 2013. They foresaw a stable year, barring deep cuts in Medicare and Medicaid.

In what researchers acknowledge is a counterintuitive finding, a study of real-world outcomes in multidisciplinary heart failure (HF) clinics found a higher rate of hospitalizations in patients seen at clinics compared with those who were not.

AstraZeneca and its cholesterol drug Crestor have temporarily fended off competitors with a favorable court ruling. The pharmaceutical maker announced that a federal court declared a substance patent for rosuvastatin calcium, the active ingredient in Crestor, is valid and enforceable.

A meta-analysis of the results of 15 studies published between August, 2001 and September, 2012,  determined that patients scheduled for PCI who were pretreated with clopidogrel experienced fewer major cardiac events than patients who were not treated, but clopidogrel was not associated with a lower risk of death.

CardioSCORE, a diagnostic blood test designed to improve risk prediction of major cardiovascular events beyond traditional risk factor assessments, has received CE Mark approval in Europe.