In Global News: Sword Swallowing, Personalizing the MyStudies App, and Tiny Pediatric Pacemakers

Patient Care and General Interest
An accident during a sword swallowing trick was bad news for the performer’s esophagus.
An imaging case study from Medscape walks through the echocardiography of a patient with rheumatic disease involving all four valves.
Disagreement between four different hospital ranking systems regarding cardiac surgery quality in the USA could cause confusion for patients trying to understand this publicly available data.
 
Research, Trials, and Funding
The US Food and Drug Administration is releasing the open source code for their MyStudies app in order to allow researchers to better adapt the tool to the specific needs of their clinical trials.
Researchers in the UK find unexpectedly high levels of cancer-associated mutations in normal esophageal tissue.
Researchers from Washington, DC, in the USA presented the prototype of their miniature pacemaker at the recent American Heart Association’s Annual Meeting, a device that they hope allows for less invasive placement of pacemaker leads on infants’ hearts.