In Global News: Your Phone Hears Your COPD, 15 Transplants For 15 Years, and New Skin [1]
Patient Care
To commemorate its 15th anniversary, the Asian Heart Institute in Mumbai, India, has pledged to subsidize the costs of 15 heart transplants [3] for patients who cannot afford them.
Doctors at the Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi in UAE have noted a relatively high number of patients treated for achalasia [4] with peroral endoscopic myotomy.
Drugs and Devices
Abbott’s MitraClip is the first transcatheter treatment for mitral regurgitation to be approved by Japan’s [5] Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare.
An app developed by a startup in Haifa, Israel, can monitor a COPD patient’s phone calls and alert them to changes in their voice that might be associated with worsening lung function [6].
Research, Trials, and Funding
Neovasc has received US Food and Drug Administration approval to begin a North America clinical trial of its Reducer [7], a catheter-based technology for refractory angina that is already approved in Europe.
An editorial from Nature discusses the road of translational research that lead to the genetically-modified skin transplant [8] that now allows a young boy to play outside without blistered skin.