Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center in Houston continues to tout itself as one of the top heart transplant centers in the country, even as quality measures lag well behind national averages.

The investigators of the anticipated ISCHEMIA trial have published a paper in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes defending their late addition of “softer” outcomes to their primary composite endpoint.

Even for patients with intermittent atrial fibrillation (AFib), the amount of time spent in an arrhythmic state is strongly associated with an increased risk of stroke, researchers reported in JAMA Cardiology.

A His bundle pacing (HBP) strategy was associated with a significant reduction in hospitalizations for heart failure when compared to pacemaker implantation via the right ventricle, according to a study published online May 14 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Risk-standardized cardiovascular mortality rates vary ‘substantially’ for ischemic heart disease (IHD) and chronic heart failure (CHF) across the Department of Veterans Affairs medical centers (VAMCs), according to a study published online May 16 in JAMA Cardiology.

Women who received catheter ablation in the FIRE AND ICE trial were 37 percent more likely than men to have a recurrence of atrial arrhythmia and 36 percent more likely to be rehospitalized for cardiovascular causes, according to an analysis published April 26 in Circulation: Arrhythmia and Electrophysiology.

Therapies targeting cholesterol and inflammation have both shown the ability to reduce cardiovascular events among patients with atherosclerosis, but more evidence is needed before anti-inflammatory drugs gain widespread use similar to statins, according to a consensus statement published May 14 in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology.

The first patient to be treated with a novel mitral valve repair system is recovering and showed no complications during a 30-day follow-up period, according to a press release issued by the system's developer.