A new pilot study out of Germany suggests a comic-style graphic supplement can improve the informed consent process before coronary angiography by putting patients at ease and helping them understand the procedure.

Once the artery has been opened with PCI, the treatment involves mixing a patient’s own blood with oxygenated saline and then infusing that superoxygenated mixture to the targeted ischemic area for 60 minutes.

Colorado became the second state to pass legislation requiring surgical smoke evacuation systems at hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers on March 28, when Gov. Jared Polis signed the bill into law. Rhode Island passed a similar law in June 2018.

To conquer STEMI’s “last frontier,” cardiologists are tapping into an evolving arsenal of strategies while calling for more data and standardized definitions to guide treating physicians.

Tracking patients’ changes in fractional flow reserve (FFR) from before to after a percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) may provide useful information, according to new research published in JAMA Cardiology. Individuals with the greatest change in FFR were less likely to experience vessel-related events and demonstrated greater symptomatic relief.

The older patients get, the higher their risk of death or bleeding after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). But a new study from a Japanese PCI registry suggests a transradial approach can prevent some of those complications, particularly in nonagenarians.

Overlapping surgery—in which a surgeon moves from one procedure to the next before the first is finished, leaving junior surgeons and trainees to wrap up the noncritical portions of the surgery—isn’t associated with increased mortality or post-op complications in most cases. But, according to a study published in JAMA Feb. 26, it can raise the risk of adverse events in high-risk patients and those undergoing coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery.

Two of Medtronic’s drug-eluting stents (DES)—the Resolute Onyx and the Resolute Integrity—have been granted FDA approval to treat coronary artery disease patients with chronic total occlusion (CTO), the company announced Feb. 26.