Heart surgeons at Johns Hopkins have evidence to support further tightening rather than easing of standards used to designate hospitals that are best at performing heart transplants.

Celebrex, a popular arthritis drug that blocks pain by inhibiting an enzyme known as COX-2, has been shown in laboratory studies to induce arrhythmia, or irregular beating of the heart, via a novel pathway unrelated to its COX-2 inhibition.

Wishing your Valentine good heart health on February 14 — and throughout 2008" Then consider the food some people love to hate, and hand over a gift bag of broccoli along with that heart-shaped box of chocolates.

People who experience brief periods of blocked blood flow may be better conditioned to survive a full-blown heart attack later, according to new research from the University of Cincinnati (UC).

Current regulatory policies should be strengthened to ensure acceptable cardiovascular safety of drugs developed primarily for non-cardiovascular medical problems, according to a recent presentation made by Dr. Jeffrey Borer, an authority in cardiovascular medicine and surgery at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City.

A normal heart burns both fats and sugars for fuel. In contrast, diabetic hearts rely almost exclusively on fats for energy, leading to heart failure. PPAR-alpha and PPAR-beta/delta are proteins found in heart tissue.

When lean healthy young adults gained about 9 pounds, the functioning of their blood vessel lining became impaired -- but shedding the weight restored proper functioning, according to a Mayo Clinic research report.

Late-breaking data presented at TCT 2007, the scientific symposium of the Cardiovascular Research Foundation (CRF), show that the use of the anticoagulant bivalirudin following angioplasty in heart attack patients reduces net adverse clinical events by 24 percent compared to the standard treatment, and significantly reduces major bleeding that occurs after angioplasty by 40 percent.

Two carotid stenting trials examining patient outcomes demonstrated results that are comparable to guidelines established by the American Heart Association (AHA) for patients treated with carotid artery surgery.

A new systematic review of trials of the comparative effectiveness of coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery and percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) in patients in whom both procedures are feasible found that survival to 10 years was similar.

University of Florida doctors on Wednesday (Oct. 3) treated their first patient enrolled in a new study designed to test whether injecting stem cells into the heart helps restore blood flow to the organ by prompting new blood vessels to grow.

Women who might have benefited from the use of an implantable heart monitor following a cardiac arrest were far less likely than men to have one prescribed, according to experts at the Duke University Medical Center.