Annual hospital PCI-related mortality rates might be unreliable measures of a center’s performance, according to work published in JAMA Cardiology, proving unhelpful for identifying high-quality care in a study of 67 New York hospitals.

The need for surgical bailout in heart patients undergoing TAVR is low, according to research published in JACC: Cardiovascular Interventions, but when it is performed outcomes are poor, reaching 50% mortality at 30 days.

With minimally invasive structural procedures crowding out their surgical counterparts, how are physicians and hospitals preparing for the new reality? 

Three-year results from the BIO-RESORT trial revealed that despite significant differences in stent backbone and polymer coating, the ultrathin sirolimus-eluting stent, very-thin everolimus-eluting stent and thin-strut zotarolimus-eluting stent remained equally safe and effective through follow-up.

Complete revascularization is superior to culprit-lesion-only PCI in patients with both STEMI and multivessel disease, according to results from the COMPLETE trial, published Sept. 1 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Using donor hearts from patients who died of traumatic brain injury might be a more viable option for transplant candidates than previously thought, according to an analysis published in the Journal of the American Heart Association Aug. 30.

KentuckyOne Health is nixing its month-old plan to inactivate its heart transplant program at Jewish Hospital in Louisville, instead opting to work with the University of Louisville to keep the program alive.

A single dose of the lipid-lowerer simvastatin, delivered to an organ donor pre-heart transplant, could decrease postoperative troponin levels in transplant recipients and protect the donor heart against perioperative myocardial ischemic damage.