Harvard Medical School scientists have created a wirelessly programmed, miniaturized pacemaker which functions for weeks to months at a time, opening the door to “previously impossible investigations of arrhythmia and heart failure in the mouse.”

Experienced operators in Europe are treating chronic total occlusions (CTOs) with increasing procedural success despite attempting more complex lesions over time, according to a report from the European Registry of CTO published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Interventions.

The shorter a patient’s hospital stay after elective percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), the better, according to recent research out of the U.K. that linked longer lengths of stay to an increase in unplanned readmissions and healthcare costs.

Prominent medical societies have issued new clinical guidelines, Thursday, Oct. 11, recommending physicians use external beam radiation therapy (EBRT) to treat men with early-stage prostate cancer.

Cystatin C (Cys-C), an alternative to renal markers like creatinine and glomerular filtration rate, can effectively predict a patient’s risk for adverse CVD events after an acute coronary syndrome (ACS), researchers reported Oct. 12 in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

The FDA has approved rivaroxaban to reduce the risk of major cardiovascular events including stroke, myocardial infarction and cardiovascular death for people with chronic peripheral or coronary artery disease (PAD/CAD).

A study presented at TCT 2018 questioned the benefits of “drip-and-ship” for elderly patients with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), finding patients in their 80s or older who were transferred with fibrinolytic therapy for PCI had an eight-fold risk of hemorrhagic stroke but no survival advantage.

Antiepileptic drugs, regardless of brand or type, increase risk of stroke in seniors diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, according to research published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.