• Alsius (Irvine, California) launched the Thermogard XP intravascular temperature management system designed to provide an enhanced level of therapeutic cooling power to clinicians serving critically ill and surgical patients that require central venous access. Alsius’ intravascular temperature management systems provide cooling and warming therapy via a computer-controlled temperature regulation system that connects to Alsius’ heat exchange catheters. The catheters are inserted into a major vein through a patient’s neck or groin, and circulate cool or warm saline in a closed-loop through balloons that surround the catheters. This approach decreases or increases core temperature from the inside of the body out toward the exterior, allowing for significantly more rapid control of a patient’s core body temperature, with greater efficiency and precision, compared to conventional external temperature management products such as cooling and warming blankets and ice packs. Alsius makes intravascular temperature management therapies.

• An independent investigator clinical trial has shown atrial fibrillation (AF) is effectively treated using the Epicor Cardiac Ablation System, when treated concomitantly to corrective heart surgery. The trial results were published in The Annals of Thoracic Surgery. St. Jude Medical (St. Paul, Minnesota) makes the Epicor system. The investigators reported that more than 83% of all patients, followed for at least six months after surgery, were free from AF. In surgical ablation performed with a high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) energy source, energy is focused from outside a beating heart to create precise and complete lines of cardiac tissue ablation to block chaotic electrical impulses. The patient does not need to be placed on a heart-lung bypass machine nor is the heart stopped. The HIFU ablation device used in the study, the Epicor Cardiac Ablation System has received FDA clearance for the surgical ablation of cardiac tissue.