In Global News: Transplant Athletes, Heart Education Toys for Kids, and Stem Cells on Implants

Patient Care

A heart team at Kingston Health Sciences Centre in Ontario performs the first hybrid cardiac ablation for atrial fibrillation 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.

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.

A cardiac surgery resident in Edmonton, Canada, has designed paper toys that help teach pediatric patients about their hearts and hospital stays.

News outlets highlight athletic successes of transplant patients including a cyclist from Fairlie, United Kingdom, and a swimmer from Michigan, USA, 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 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 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 where they report a decrease in nitroprusside and isoproterenol usage at 47 US hospitals following price hikes in the cost of each drug.

A highly-detailed, 3D representation of the cardiac conduction system in the intact human heart is published in Scientific Reports.

The University of Maryland School of Medicine has received a grant to establish the first cardiac xenotransplantation research center in the USA.