A hospital system in North Carolina launched on March 26 the first Federal Aviation Administration-sanctioned program allowing drones to make routine commercial package deliveries. Blood samples will be flown one-third of a mile from one WakeMed Health and Hospitals facility to another building on its Raleigh campus at least 30 times per week, the Associated Press reported.

An expert consensus statement published by the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions (SCAI) offers guidance for the safe and effective use of patent foramen ovale (PFO) closure devices to prevent recurrent stroke.

Patients with severe but asymptomatic aortic stenosis have better survival two and three years later if an aortic valve replacement (AVR) is initially recommended instead of a “watchful waiting” approach, according to a single-center study published in The Annals of Thoracic Surgery.

While accident victims in the U.S. are uniformly taken directly to the most advanced trauma center nearby, the protocols for where to shuttle stroke patients vary widely by state, according to a recent article by Stateline.

A mesh envelope embedded with antibiotics cut the risk of major device-related infections by 40 percent when placed around cardiac implantable electronic devices (CIEDs) like pacemakers and defibrillators, researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The FDA has approved the Optimizer Smart system as an implantable treatment option for heart failure patients with left ventricular ejection fraction between 25 and 45 percent who aren’t candidates for cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT).

In the largest-ever randomized trial of antihypertensive drug treatment in sub-Saharan Africa, two medication combinations including the long-acting calcium channel blocker amlodipine outperformed a third two-drug combination featuring a diuretic and an angiotensin-converting-enzyme (ACE) inhibitor.

Hypertensive patients from the RADIANCE-HTN SOLO trial who received renal denervation sustained a lower blood pressure through six months compared to participants randomized to a sham procedure, despite being placed on fewer antihypertensive medications during follow-up.