In Global News: Transplant Athletes, Heart Education Toys for Kids, and Stem Cells on Implants [1]
Patient Care
A heart team at Kingston Health Sciences Centre in Ontario performs the first hybrid cardiac ablation for atrial fibrillation [3] in Canada.
A five-year-old boy from Newcastle, South Africa, is among the youngest and smallest people to receive a heart ventricular assist device [4].
Surgical teams in Armenia already use minimally invasive procedures in the abdominal cavity, and they will soon add them to their arsenal of tools for treating lung cancer [5].
A cardiac surgery resident in Edmonton, Canada, has designed paper toys that help teach pediatric patients [6] about their hearts and hospital stays.
News outlets highlight athletic successes of transplant patients including a cyclist from Fairlie, United Kingdom [7], and a swimmer from Michigan, USA [8], who medaled in the World Transplant Games in Málaga, Spain.
Two paramedics in New York, USA, responded immediately when a nurse suffered a cardiac arrest in their home [9] during a postsurgical follow-up visit.
Drugs and Devices
Surgeons have implanted the first Biostage Cellspan esophageal implant, in which a patient’s stem cells are seeded [10] onto an esophageal scaffold.
Research, Trials, and Funding
Physicians from the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio wrote a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine [11] where they report a decrease in nitroprusside and isoproterenol usage at 47 US hospitals following price hikes in the cost of each drug [12].
A highly-detailed, 3D representation of the cardiac conduction system in the intact human heart [13] is published in Scientific Reports.
The University of Maryland School of Medicine has received a grant to establish the first cardiac xenotransplantation research center [14] in the USA.