Few issues are more important to the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the American Heart Association (AHA) than translating the best available scientific evidence into clinical practice guidelines that can be used by healthcare professionals to improve patient outcomes and the quality of cardiovascular care. This is evidenced by the 17 clinical practice guideline topics — and many more updates — the organizations have jointly developed and published since the early 1980s through a highly robust process and methodology that continues to evolve.

The first outcome-based guidelines for interventional treatment of acute ischemic stroke — providing recommendations for rapid treatment — will benefit individuals suffering from brain attacks, often caused by artery-blocking blood clots. Representatives from the Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR) and seven other medical societies created a multispecialty and international consensus on the metrics and benchmarks for processes of care and technical and clinical outcomes for stroke patients.

A patient's relationship with his or her doctor has long been considered an important component of healing. Now, in a novel investigation in which physicians underwent brain scans while they believed they were actually treating patients, researchers have provided the first scientific evidence indicating that doctors truly can feel their patients' pain — and can also experience their relief following treatment.

January 31, 2013 — Belgian biotechnology company Cardio3 BioSciences (C3BS) announced it has received authorization to begin its Congestive Heart failure Cardiopoietic Regenerative Therapy (CHART-1) European phase III trial for C3BS-CQR-1 in Belgium.

January has been a month of change for Abbott, and a senior medical devices analyst from GlobalData asserts that the company’s latest cardiac diagnostics product represents the first step in a line of new diagnostic products that will act to deliver growth over the next few years.