• Synthetic Blood International (Costa Mesa, California) opened patient enrollment in its first Phase II trial for Oxycyte, a perfluorocarbon blood substitute and therapeutic oxygen carrier. The company said this trial will be the first in a series to focus on surgery, trauma and indications for therapeutic oxygen and will be administered to hip surgery patients experiencing mild-to-moderate blood loss during surgery.

• Viasys Healthcare's (Conshohoken, Pennsylvania) NeuroCare Group (Madison, Wisconsin) has introduced a new software platform for the GSI Audera System. The GSI Audera was the first auditory steady state response (ASSR) system cleared for marketing by the FDA. With the introduction of Version 2.0, the GSI Audera system is a platform product offering ASSR, auditory evoked potentials, cortical potentials and distortion product otoacoustic emissions testing. New software licensing allows these functions to be ordered separately or in combination. Version 2.0 also provides electrical auditory brainstem response capabilities as an aid for cochlear implant evaluation and vestibular evoked myogenic potentials for diagnosis of vestibular conditions. This combination of features makes the GSI Audera system one of the most comprehensive diagnostic systems available for the evaluation and diagnosis of cochlear and retrocochlear function, the company said.

• Vivant Medical (Mountain View, California) reported an ongoing investigational study to determine the effectiveness of microwave ablation for treatment of liver tumors. In the multi-center study, using Vivant's VivaWave Microwave Ablation System, which is FDA-cleared for coagulation of soft tissue, researchers are evaluating the effectiveness of using both the VivaTip and VivaRing ATOM energy applicators to kill tumors with heat created by means of microwave energy. The VivaRing ATOM is designed to allow doctors to encircle a tumor, either surgically or percutaneously, and kill it from the outside in, with the intent of minimizing the risk that any malignant cells could be left behind. The VivaTip, a straight probe, is intended to allow doctors to penetrate the tumor by applying energy directly into the center of the tumor. The company said that, unlike other forms of thermal ablation, the VivaWave system allows doctors to use multiple probes simultaneously, making faster procedures possible.