Here are 28 moves from the top heart centers across the nation throughout 2022:
- Cincinnati-based Mercy Health is consolidating its open-heart surgery program to two Ohio hospitals starting in mid-2023.
- Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital opened a heart center for amyloid conditions.
- The American Heart Association and Boston-based Massachusetts General Hospital have partnered to develop a new digital health app for frontline healthcare workers.
- Chapel Hill, N.C.-based UNC Center for Women's Health Research received $12.5 million to identify effective strategies for implementing pregnancy-related hypertension best practices in outpatient facilities.
- Dover, Del.-based Bayhealth is cutting heart failure readmissions by 67 percent through a pilot program that focuses on social determinants of health.
- Tampa (Fla.) General Heart & Vascular Institute is partnering with Recora, a technology company focused on cardiac rehabilitation, to provide a virtual cardiac recovery program to outpatients across 23 counties in Florida.
- Marietta, Ga.-based Wellstar Health System launched an aortic program designed to provide emergency and nonemergent care for aortic diseases.
- Charlotte, N.C.-based Atrium Health Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute's heart transplant team is using technology that keeps hearts viable for up to eight hours instead of the traditional four. (Note: On Dec. 2, Atrium finalized its merger with Advocate Aurora Health to form Advocate Health.)
- Cardiologists at Durham, N.C.-based Duke Health performed what is believed to be the world's first partial heart transplant by fusing the arteries and valves from a freshly donated heart onto an existing heart.
- Evanston, Ill.-based Northwestern University and Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins University were awarded the first national grant to study wearables in atrial fibrillation treatment.
- The American Heart Association, in collaboration with The Joint Commission, launched a new certification July 1 to ensure effective care for patients experiencing cardiac events.
- Danville, Pa.-based Geisinger Medical Center is the first hospital in the U.S. to receive The Joint Commission's Comprehensive Heart Attack Center Certification.
- The American Heart Association and the Cardiovascular Research Foundation are forming an alliance to expand educational opportunities in cardiovascular disease and interventional therapies.
- A physician-created, low-tech care strategy cut cardiac arrests in Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center's pediatric intensive care units by 30 percent.
- A new program at the Stony Brook (N.Y.) Heart Institute is designed to care for patients with cardiogenic shock, the leading cause of death after a severe heart attack.
- The world's first heart transplant involving a donor and recipient who are both HIV-positive was performed at New York City-based Montefiore Health System's Bronx location.
- A team at NYU Langone Health transplanted two genetically engineered pig hearts into recently deceased humans to gather data on transplants between species and address a national organ shortage.
- NewYork-Presbyterian Hudson Valley Hospital in Cortlandt Manor, N.Y., launched an interventional cardiology program.
- Atlantic Health System's Morristown (N.J.) Medical Center launched the first hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and sports cardiology fellowship in the U.S.
- Researchers at Smidt Heart Institute at Los Angeles-based Cedars-Sinai developed an algorithm that, for the first time, distinguishes between treatable and untreatable forms of sudden cardiac arrest.
- Researchers from Los Angeles-based Cedars-Sinai developed an artificial intelligence tool to predict patients' heart attack risk.
- Beaumont, Texas-based Christus St. Elizabeth Hospital began offering a new test aimed at detecting heart attacks earlier in women.
- Researchers at Los Angeles-based Cedars-Sinai's Smidt Heart Institute created an artificial intelligence tool that can identify and distinguish between two overlooked heart conditions: hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and cardiac amyloidosis.
- Cardiologists from Winston-Salem, N.C.-based Baptist’s Brenner Children’s Hospital and Charlotte, N.C.-based Atrium Health Levine Children’s Hospital combined their efforts into a joint pediatric cardiology program.
- Boston-based Brigham and Women's Hospital did not perform a heart transplant on a patient who refuses to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
- The Joint Commission and the American Heart Association launched the Comprehensive Heart Attack Center Certification program Jan. 19 to advance care for the most complex and severely ill cardiac patients.
- Telemedicine at Johns Hopkins Medicine enabled a patient to receive a stroke diagnosis and treatment plan without actually going to the hospital.
- Baltimore-based University of Maryland School of Medicine clinicians performed the first successful transplant of a genetically modified pig heart in a patient with end-stage heart disease.