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August 11, 2011 Making CT scans safer should start with simple step of figuring out how much radiation you actually need to get the job done, researchers say.

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July 29, 2011 The way the Food and Drug Administration evaluates a big swath of medical devices before they are offered for sale is flawed according to a report just released by the independent Institute of Medicine. The expert panel recommends scrapping the current approach.

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July 28, 2011 Approximately one in three kidney failure patients have antibodies that make it hard to receive a kidney transplant. But a new treatment can clean their blood of the antibodies prior to transplant. The patients who received it had a much higher survival rate than those who stayed on dialysis or took conventional anti-rejection drugs.

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July 12, 2011 KHNSleep medicine specialists say surgery to treat obstructive apnea isn't the best first choice. Start with a breathing device called a continuous positive airway pressure mask, they recommend.

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May 6, 2011 Last year, almost half of the $16 million collected by the Heart Rhythm Society came from makers of drugs and devices, ProPublica reports. More than $5 million in industry largesse came in the form of sponsorships and support of the group's big annual meeting.

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February 14, 2011 Alarms on various monitors ring, beep, and do just about everything short of firing off a flare to get a nurse's attention. All that noise tends to wear nurses down, and often it masks the truly important warnings.

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February 9, 2011 Medtronic makes the gizmo, called the Revo MRI SureScan Pacing System. In a clinical test that included nearly 500 patients, none had any MRI-related complications.

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January 4, 2011 Some 23 percent of implanted cardioverter defibrillators don't meet guidelines, researchers found. Some patients who received implants were recovering from a heart attack or heart bypass surgery.

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January 3, 2011 An experimental plastic chip could be used to find even a few cancer cells floating in the blood. Now the health products giant Johnson & Johnson is investing in the technology being developed at a Boston hospital.

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December 8, 2010 A federal appeals court says the FDA can regulate electronic cigarettes as tobacco products but not as medical devices or drugs. That means the FDA, which got sweeping powers to regulate tobacco products in 2009, can't ban electronic cigarettes.

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December 6, 2010 Some gases used to anesthetize patients for surgery are hundreds of times more potent at warming the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. The volume of anesthesia gases used worldwide for surgery is about as bad for the climate as 1 million cars.

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November 29, 2010 KHNA new study shows that CT scans have increased in emergency rooms nearly six-fold since 1995 and show no sign of tapering off. But the findings also suggest that the ER may be overusing or misusing the technology.

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