In Global News: Transcatheter Heart Valves, Lung Function, and the Human Sinoatrial Node

Patient Care

An Iraqi boy from Mosul went from Jordan to Australia for surgery to correct the blood flow through his heart and repair a hole between his ventricles.

Transcatheter approaches continue growing as transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) is performed for the first time in Kenya at the Aga Khan University Hospital and in Bangladesh at the United Hospital Ltd.

The Palestinian Authority chief negotiator will need a lung transplant as medical treatment for his pulmonary fibrosis is no longer sufficient.

A professional basketball player in the USA talks about undergoing and recovering from open heart surgery.

Drugs and Devices

Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, is partnering with AliveCor to improve early detection of long QT syndrome with AliveCor’s Kardia Mobile device.

The European Medicines Agency must relocate from its current London offices ahead of Brexit (the UK leaving the European Union), and 19 different cities are vying to be the agency’s new home.

The Avalus pericardial aortic surgical valve from Medtronic, an MRI-safe stented valve, is now CE (Conformité Européenne) marked and has received US Food and Drug Administration approval. Medtronic also announced CE mark and the European launch of the CoreValve^TM Evolut^TM PRO valve.

Research, Trials, and Funding

Researchers at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, find that the human heart has multiple pacing mechanisms with redundancies in the sinoatrial node.

Researchers at the CSIR Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology in New Delhi, India, will soon start a longitudinal study of the factors affecting lung function in children.