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Bradley Goskowicz has been named vice president of Abiomed (Danvers, Massachusetts), and Anthony Bailey has been promoted from vice president for business development to senior vice president for operations. Most recently, Goskowicz was vice president of sales and marketing at Thoratec. Abiomed is a developer of devices used to assist or replace the pumping function of the failing heart.
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After several long months, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS; Baltimore, Maryland) in late September agreed to expand the coverage of ventricular assist devices (VADs) as permanent cardiac support for certain Medicare beneficiaries.
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Bristol-Myers Squibb (New York) and Corgentech (South San Francisco, California), a privately held biotechnology company, have entered into an agreement to jointly develop and commercialize Corgentechs E2F Decoy (edifoligide sodium), a first-of-its-kind E2F Decoy treatment currently in Phase III development for the prevention of vein graft failure following coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) and peripheral artery bypass graft surgery.
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Beckman Coulter (Fullerton, California) has acquired the technologies of Peoples Genetics (PGI; Woburn, Massachusetts), used for the comprehensive genetic analysis of large pooled populations of individual patient DNAs. Details of the cash transaction were not disclosed.
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Icelandic researchers report identifying a gene that is associated with susceptibility to stroke. Their findings appear in the October issue of Nature Genetics. Co-senior author is medical geneticist and neurologist Kari Stefansson, chairman, chief executive officer and president of deCode Genetics (Reykjavik, Iceland). The basic findings are two in number, Stefansson said, One is a gene that contains variants predisposed to the common form of stroke.
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VIENNA, Austria The market for products used in the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular disease in Europe is the second-largest regional market worldwide after the U.S., and has historically been the first to adopt new device technologies. Certain European countries, including a number in Eastern Europe such as Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Romania, rank among the highest in the world in deaths from cardiovascular disease.
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Cephalosporins, macrolides, and fluoroquinolones currently represent foundation antimicrobials for managing common respiratory infections caused by bacterial and/or atypical pathogens.
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Emergency physicians (EPs), and physicians in general, have faced enormous tests of their core professionalism and ethical values in recent years. The unionization of resident physicians, the financial pressures of a managed care environment, and the thorny role of the pharmaceutical industry have presented new and difficult challenges for medicine.
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Long hours and steady salaries are current trends for health care quality managers, according to the latest Hospital Peer Review Salary Survey. Although opportunities abound for todays quality professionals, you may need additional skills to reap the benefits, say leaders in the field.
