Cardiovascular / Cardiology
Fitbit’s heart rate monitoring accuracy questioned in class action suit
Fitbit is facing yet another class action suit, this time over its heart rate monitoring, which plaintiffs claim is inaccurate to a dangerous degree. “Plaintiffs and many consumers like them have experienced — and testing confirms — that the PurePulse trackers consistently mis-record heart rates by a very significant margin, particularly during exercise,” the suit…
Read MoreGoogle Aims a $50 Million Moonshot at Curing Heart Disease
CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE KILLS MORE people on Earth than anything else—over 17 million a year, and the number keeps going up. Of those deaths, more than 40 percent is due to coronary heart disease. Medicine has drugs that can treat it and practices that can help prevent it, but nobody really knows what causes it or how to…
Read MoreSpectranetics Announces FDA Clearance of Turbo-Power(TM) Laser Atherectomy Catheter
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., Nov. 12, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The Spectranetics Corporation (SPNC) today announced receipt of U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 510(k) clearance of its peripheral atherectomy product, the Turbo-Power(TM) Laser Atherectomy Catheter, for the treatment of in-stent restenosis (ISR). Laser atherectomy is driving a new standard of care for in-stent restenosis treatment…
Read MoreBoston Scientific To Acquire Interventional Radiology Business Of CeloNova Biosciences
MARLBOROUGH, Mass., Nov. 10, 2015 /PRNewswire/ — Boston Scientific (NYSE: BSX) has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the interventional radiology portfolio of CeloNova Biosciences, a San Antonio-based developer of endovascular and interventional cardiology technologies. The structured agreement includes drug-eluting microspheres designed to be loaded with chemotherapy drugs for delivery to cancerous tumors, and…
Read MoreMedtronic Buys Lazarus Effect For 100 Million
Medtronic is acquiring private-held Lazarus Effect, developer of a mesh cover for stent retrievers of blood clots, for $100 million in cash. As part of the deal, Medtronic obtains the Lazarus Cover device, which will serve as an adjunct to Medtronic’s Solitaire stent retriever device, used to remove clots from acute ischemic stroke patients. A…
Read MoreQuitting Cigarettes Before Surgery Risky
MONTREAL — Quitting smoking before lung surgery is a good thing, but doing it too soon before the procedure might not be, a researcher said here. In a single-institution cohort, patients who quit smoking within a month of their thoracoscopic lobectomy to treat lung cancer had more complications than those with a longer time off…
Read MoreStroke in marijuana users linked to arterial stenosis
The new study, the first to investigate differences in stroke between marijuana users and non-users, found that ischemic strokes in young adults who use marijuana are more likely to result from stenosis, or narrowing of the arteries in the skull, than strokes in non-users. Marijuana is the most commonly used illicit drug in the US.…
Read MoreFour Year Old’s Life is Changed by 3D Printed Heart
(CNN) Mia Gonzalez spent the first 3½ years of her life missing out. She had to skip day care and dance classes because she constantly had colds and pneumonia. When Mia could go out and play, she was easily winded and took multiple asthma medications to try to help her breathing. After about 10 hospital stays, doctors realized…
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