January 17, 2012 — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) expanded the approved usage for an endovascular graft manufactured by W.L. Gore and Associates Inc. to include treatment of life-threatening tears or ruptures of the aorta (thoracic aortic transection).

January 16, 2012 — Philips Healthcare announced the enrollment of the first patients in its CHILL-MI clinical study. The RAPID MI-ICE trial showed a 38 percent reduction in infarct size in STEMI patients who were cooled to a temperature of less than 35° C prior to performing angioplasty.

January 13, 2012 — Amorcyte Inc., a NeoStem Inc. company, announced the expansion of intellectual property protection around its lead product candidate, AMR-001, with the grant of U.S. patent number 8,088,370 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Amorcyte's first issued patent (7,794,705) entitled "Compositions and Methods of Vascular Injury Repair," protects a chemotactic stem cell product enriched for CD34+ cells that treats injury from acute myocardial infarction (AMI). The new patent covers the use of AMR-001 in the repair of any vascular injury caused by vascular insufficiency, and effectively expands the breadth of the patented claims beyond the current target indications for AMR-001.

January 12, 2012 – Stereotaxis Inc. (announced the completion of the first 50 clinical procedures using the company's new Niobe ES system to treat patients with a variety of complex cardiac arrhythmias. A majority of the first 50 cases were performed to treat atrial fibrillation (AF), the most common type of cardiac arrhythmia. Positive initial results with the Niobe ES system in Europe demonstrate that the average time for completion of mapping and ablation for the initial AF patients was 69 minutes. The data will be featured at the Boston Atrial Fibrillation Symposium 2012 to be held on January 12-14, 2012.

January 12, 2012 — A project led by The American Society of Echocardiography (ASE) will utilize the latest technological innovations in the field to bring cardiovascular ultrasound to rural India.

January 11, 2012 — HeartWare International, Inc. and Dualis MedTech GmbH, a subsidiary of AVRA Surgical, Inc., announced an agreement to develop ventricular assist devices with wireless, transcutaneous energy transfer system (TETS) technology exclusively for HeartWare.