• AGA Medical Holdings (Plymouth, Minnesota) reported a transition of responsibilities in its senior management team. Franck Gougeon has decided to leave his role as president/CEO, but will remain a member of the AGA's board and will chair the newly formed corporate development committee. Gougeon co-founded AGA in 1995. He was named president/CEO in July 2005. John Barr, who has been COO of AGA since 2005, has been named president/CEO. AGA Medical makes interventional devices to treat structural heart defects.

• Boston Scientific (Natick, Massachusetts) said that President/CEO Jim Tobin will be extending his tenure at the company, and that Fred Colen will become the president of its cardiac rhythm management (CRM) group. COO Paul LaViolette will be retiring from the company. Colen has been with Boston Sci since 1999, most recently as executive VP of operations and technology, CRM. LaViolette joined the company in 1994, and has been COO since 2005.

• Kenneth Hachikian has been elected chairman of the board of Cambridge Heart (Tewksbury, Massachusetts), replacing Robert Khederian, who resigned the position but will continue to serve as a director. The board also elected Jeffrey Wiggins as a new director. Wiggins is a former principal of Dresdner RCM Capital Management. In addition, Louis Blumberg has resigned from the board. Hachikian has served on the company's board since July 2004 and is a member of its audit committee and chairman of the nominating and compensation committees. Cambridge Heart makes products for the non-invasive diagnosis of cardiac disease, particularly the identification of those at risk of sudden cardiac arrest.

• Deborah DeFilippo was named CFO of FlowCardia (Sunnyvale, California). Most recently, DeFilippo was VP/CFO of business development for the Guidant Cardiac Surgery business. FlowCardia makes endovascular devices for coronary and peripheral chronic total occlusion recanalization.

• Jeff Hinton was named executive VP/CFO of MedCath (Charlotte, North Carolina). Previously, he was senior VP/CFO for Matria Healthcare. MedCath specializes in high-acuity healthcare services, predominately the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular disease.

• Christopher Cabell, MD, has been named chief medical and scientific officer for Quintiles Transnational (Research Triangle Park, North Carolina), succeeding Oren Cohen, MD, recently named senior VP, clinical research strategies. Most recently, Cabell was global cardiovascular/endocrine therapeutic group leader within the medical and scientific services group and provided cardiology expertise for Quintiles Electrocardiogram Services. Quintiles Transnational provides a broad range of professional services in drug development, commercialization and strategic partnering for the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device industries.

• Signalife (Los Angeles) said it has named Lee Ehrlichman, a member of the company's board, as president/COO. Ehrlichman previously was president/CEO of Cardiac Telecom. Lowell Harmison, Signalife's prior president/CEO, has taken an indefinite leave of absence as both an officer and director, during which he is expected to consult to the company. Rowland Perkins, previously Signalife's interim administrative CEO, will assume all duties of CEO. Signalife specializes in monitoring, detection and prevention of disease through continuous biomedical signal monitoring.

• Louis Ruggiero was named senior VP of North America for Stereotaxis (St. Louis). Ruggiero most recently was chief sales & marketing officer at DJ Orthopedics. Stereotaxis makes advanced cardiology instrument control systems for use in a hospital's interventional surgical suite to enhance the treatment of coronary artery disease and arrhythmias.

• Xtent (Menlo Park, California) said that Christopher Smith and Arthur Taylor have been named to the company's board of directors. Smith is president of Cochlear Americas; Taylor was a senior executive at Medtronic from November 2007 to this May. Xtent makes DES systems for the treatment of coronary artery disease.