In Global News: Emergency Windpipe Repair, Drug Use and Endocarditis, and Ticagrelor Versus Aspirin After CABG [1]
Patient Care and General Interest
Surgeons at the Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi in the UAE used a metal stent for an emergency repair [3] of a patient’s windpipe, which had been completely severed in a traffic accident.
A report from the UK Lung Cancer Coalition says that geographic variation persists [4] despite improvements in 5-year survival rates for lung cancer in the UK.
Drugs and Devices
Medtronic has received the CE Mark for its Valiant Navion™ thoracic stent graft [5] system, a low-profile thoracic stent for patients with small iliac arteries and other anatomic variations.
Research, Trials, and Funding
Physicians in Ontario, Canada, evaluate in-hospital counseling and surgery for injection drug users with endocarditis [6], finding that both reduce mortality in these patients.
Researchers at Stanford University in California are matching donor and pediatric recipient heart volumes using CT scans [7], rather than relying on height and weight to determine if a child could accept a particular donor heart.
At the recent meeting of the American Heart Association, researchers from Germany reported similar rates of major adverse cardiovascular events and major bleeding [8] for patients taking either ticagrelor or aspirin after coronary artery bypass.