A new device about the size of a business card could allow health care providers to test blood for insulin and other blood proteins, cholesterol, and even signs of viral or bacterial infection all at the same time — with one drop of blood. Preliminary tests of the V-chip, created by scientists at The Methodist Hospital Research Institute and MD Anderson Cancer Center, were published by Nature Communications.

December 21, 2012 — Nanostim Inc. announced the first successful implants of a leadless pacemaker in a series of 11 patients at Homolka Hospital in Prague, Czech Republic. The leadless pacemakers were implanted by Drs. Petr Neuzil, head of cardiology at Homolka Hospital, and Vivek Reddy, director of electrophysiology at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.

BioControl Medical has announced that the pilot clinical study of its CardioFit vagus nerve stimulation system has been recognized as seminal original research in the European Journal of Heart Failure. According to a recent editorial, “the highly cited open-label Phase II study [of the CardioFit] by De Ferrari et al. demonstrated for the first time that chronic vagus nerve stimulation is associated with improvements in New York Heart Association (NYHA) class, six min[ute] walk test, left ventricular ejection fraction, and systolic volumes up to 1 year, [setting] the stage for further investigations and clinical trials in this new era of device thearapy.”[1,2]

December 19, 2012 — The latest generation of diagnostic tests in development is expected to provide information that will be important to patient outcomes, potentially reducing the time to diagnosis of heart attacks by several hours. The specific performance characteristics of several troponin tests were evaluated in a new study published in Clinical Chemistry.[1]