After years of decline, amputations are increasing among diabetic patients in the U.S., Reuters reported.

The holiday season is a time of merriment for families around the world, but amid the excitement comes a sobering result from a Swedish study: The incidence of heart attacks spikes around the holidays, particularly on Christmas Eve.

A trial designed to test the effectiveness of additional antibiotic prophylaxis before and after cardiac electronic device implantation found that such an approach did not significantly lower the rate of subsequent infections, although there was a trend in that direction.

A simple test to measure walking speed can indicate frailty and inform survival predictions for older patients undergoing cardiac surgery, suggests a study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

The psychosocial status of adults living with congenital heart disease (CHD) has improved over the past couple of decades, researchers report of a cross-sectional study that analyzed CHD patients’ quality of life between 1995 and 2015.

Amazon has teamed up with product developer Omron Healthcare to integrate its Alexa voice assistant with Omron’s family of blood pressure monitors, CNBC reported. The move is expected to help heart patients better manage their BP.

Although efforts to reduce heart failure (HF)-related deaths and readmissions in the United States were successful in the early 2000s, rates of HF-related ER visits, comorbid hospitalizations and mortality are at a standstill in 2018, according to a nationwide study published Dec. 11 in Circulation: Heart Failure.

Three administrators at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, including the CEO, have resigned following a report from the Tampa Bay Times that found mortality rates tripled in the pediatric heart surgery unit from 2015 to 2017—even as the center began to turn away more challenging cases.