In Global News: Delirium After Cardiac Surgery, CALS in India, and Modeling Mitral Repair

Patient Care and General Interest

The Cardiac Surgery Advanced Life Support (CALS) protocol is expanding to India from the UK, as a cardiac surgical team at Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research in Chennai will become certified CALS trainers.

Drugs and Devices

Edwards Lifesciences has received CE Mark approval for its Pascal transcatheter mitral repair system.

Moves are afoot in the world of robotic bronchoscopy, as Intuitive Surgical receives US Food and Drug Administration approval for its Ion system and Johnson & Johnson acquires Auris Health and its Monarch platform.

Admedus reports interim data from the feasibility study of its single-piece 3D stentless aortic valve in sheep.

CareDx, Inc, announced that the company’s donor derived cell-free DNA test for lung transplant rejection, AlloSure Lung, will be available under a compassionate use program.

Research, Trials, and Funding

Adding acetaminophen to administration of a sedative reduced the incidence and duration of delirium after cardiac surgery, say researchers from Boston, Massachusetts, in JAMA.

Embyronic heart-derived immune cells keep valves slim and in shape, say developmental biologists from the University of California Los Angeles.

Researchers from around the US are advancing computational modeling to predict the postoperative outcome of mitral repairs with presurgical imaging data.