Journal and News Scan

This video and article detail the author’s technique for the classic hybrid arch debranching procedure. It is performed for patients who have had a prior type A dissection repair with aortic arch and descending thoracic aortic dilation but who are not felt to be candidates for more extensive hybrid repairs that require total arch replacement. Hughes emphasizes the importance of appropriate patient selection for the success of this type I hybrid arch repair and discusses his center’s selection criteria.

This cautionary article outlines new trends in how the courts view surgeon responsibility for obtaining informed consent.

This is an instructive editorial that reminds us of the challenges women face in CT surgery.  It describes how to go beyond the social online movement to achieve practical changes in training, hiring, and mentoring.

Patient Care and General Interest

A congenital heart surgeon in Boston, Massachusetts, was once a patient himself.

A team at the ADK hospital in the Maldives has performed the country’s first coronary artery bypass surgery.

A woman receiving a heart-lung transplant was also able to donate her heart, and she met the woman who received her heart at the Transplant Games of America.

The American University of Beirut Medical Center in Lebanon became the first in the country to perform a pulmonary thromboendarterectomy.

Drugs and Devices

Boston Scientific has announced progress toward new US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of its Lotus Edge valve.

An investigational treatment for bronchiolitis obliterans, which can occur in patients who receive a lung transplant, has been granted Orphan Drug Designation by the US FDA.

Research, Trials, and Funding

An analysis of the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Registry found diabetes to be a predictor of poor transplant-free survival in patients diagnosed with cystic fibrosis as adults.