In Global News: Screening for Congenital Heart Disease, Regenerative Medicine for the Heart, and Predicting Heart Failure Outcomes

Patient Care and General Interest
Screening infants for critical congenital heart disease at birth is becoming mandatory in the US state of Idaho and the Indian state of Kerala.
Tufts Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, has completed its 500th heart transplant.
 
Drugs and Devices
The Venus P-Valve self-expanding pulmonary valve from Venus Medtech has been launched in Canada. The valve was developed for percutaneous implantation in native right ventricular outflow tracts.
The US Food and Drug Administration has issued a Class I recall for the HeartWare Ventricular Assist Device from Medtronic due to the possibility of an interrupted connection between the power source and the device controller.
 
Research, Trials, and Funding
A cardiac surgery team in Japan has approval to test induced pluripotent stem cell grafts in patients with damaged heart tissue to determine the safety of this regenerative medicine approach.
Interim data from a phase II trial from Leading BioSciences suggests that the company’s serine protease inhibitor, which targets postoperative ileus, reduces the length of intensive care and hospital stay for patients undergoing cardiac procedures on cardiopulmonary bypass.
An analysis from a European registry determined that mortality prediction models for heart failure patients have relatively poor reliability and are not used often in clinical practice.