Health hot news

St. Jude Medical, Inc. (NYSE:STJ) today announced it has launched several new cardiac rhythm management devices for the treatment and diagnosis of abnormal heart rhythms.

Brain implants that can more clearly record signals from surrounding neurons in rats have been created at the University of Michigan. The findings could eventually lead to more effective treatment of neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease and paralysis. Neural electrodes must work for time periods ranging from hours to years. When the electrodes are implanted, the brain first reacts to the acute injury with an inflammatory response.

From scopes that help premature babies breathe to techniques for imaging live neurons and beating hearts as they develop, the latest optical and laser technology being deployed in medicine and the biosciences will be on display at the Optical Society’s (OSA) Annual Meeting, Frontiers in Optics (FiO), which takes place Oct. 11-15 at the Fairmont San Jose Hotel and the Sainte Claire Hotel in San Jose, Calif.

Research published on bmj.com today reports that doctors could forecast a patient’s risk of receiving a domestic abuse diagnosis years in advance by using electronic medical records as an early warning system. Dr Ben Reis from the Children’s Hospital Boston Informatics Program and Harvard Medical School is the lead author. Researchers investigated whether the amount of historical electronic data could be used to identify high risk patients.

The Virginia Tech College of Engineering’s Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa) has captured another top award for its updated innovative robotic hand that can automatically change its grasping force using compressed air. A team of five undergraduate students won First Place in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Student Mechanism and Robot Design Competition at the International Design Engineering Technical Conference.

With the risk of developing dementia growing at an alarming pace, a University of Central Florida research team is working with the Boston University School of Medicine to develop a miniature diagnostic toolkit in the hopes of stimulating earlier detection and treatment.

Surgical treatment for mitral valve disease includes either repairing the patient’s diseased valve or replacing it with a metal, mechanical valve or an animal tissue valve. The majority of those procedures are open-heart operations that require a major incision in the chest.

Excelsior Medical, one of the leading manufacturers of pre-filled catheter flush syringes and syringe pump systems, announced that it has launched a major new product: the SwabCap ™ Luer Access Valve Disinfection Cap. SwabCap™ is a simple twist-on device that disinfects swab-able luer access valves prior to catheter line access.

Transcatheter heart valve company CardiAQ Valve Technologies (CVT), which is developing the world’s first self-conforming and self-anchoring technology for Transcatheter Mitral Valve Implantation (TMVI), announced today that successful results of an acute in vivo study of its TMVI system were disclosed by Dr.