CardiaCare’s Board Chairman, Ken Nelson, on ECG’s place in modern cardiology.

Atrial Fibrillation

GLP-1s Add AFib To Their Benefits List

It seems like every week we’re discovering a new GLP-1 cardiac benefit, with the TRANSFORM-AF study now suggesting the drug could help reduce AFib burden.

• Up to six million people in the U.S. have AFib, making it one of the more common cardiovascular conditions.
• Despite significant ablation advancements, AFib’s recurrence risk is ~30% at one year and rises over time, likely due to cardiometabolic factors like obesity.
• Over 50% of patients undergoing AF ablation in the U.S. are obese, which limits how effective ablation can be in the long run.

Examining the effects of GLP-1s on AFib, researchers examined 2.5k patients from 170 Veterans Affairs sites across the U.S. and found that AFib patients with obesity who were treated with a diabetes-managing dose of GLP-1s experienced fewer AFib-related events.

• GLP-1 use led to a 13% reduction in AFib hospitalizations, cardioversions, and ablation procedures, during a median follow-up of three years.
• The benefits of the GLP-1 were even greater for patients with severe obesity (BMI >40).

Although it’s still not certain if these benefits are due to GLP-1’s direct interaction with AFib, the study suggests that the drug  could be making an impact outside of the weight loss given that there was only a modest 4% weight reduction with the diabetes management dose (lower than GLP-1’s weight loss dose).

With the results of TRANSFORM-AF, AFib could join the growing list of GLP-1s’ cardiovascular benefits…

• TThe STRIDE trial showed GLP-1s improve the impact of PAD.
• The SELECT trial found that overweight or obese patients with CVD reduced their risk of MACE on GLP-1s.
• The SUMMIT trial for Eli Lilly’s GLP-1/GIP drug, tirzepatide, found it reduced mortality risks in HFpEF patients with obesity.

The Takeaway

GLP-1s continue to impress, but with each new study that touts their benefits, the questions on how this occurs get more important. Even if it is just due to the benefits of weight loss, reducing the burden of AFib and other CV conditions with a single drug is hard to dismiss.

A Better Way to Coordinate Post-Stroke Care

Think your EHR messaging system might be holding back your post-stroke care? See how UC San Diego Medical Center streamlined its neuro and EP teams’ post-stroke workflow with Viz Connect, and the impact it had on cardiac monitor placements in inpatient and outpatient settings.

Addressing Coronary Artery Disease

Learn how the AGENT™ Drug-Coated Balloon provides a new treatment option for in-stent restenosis in the U.S. Rx Only. (Sponsored by Boston Scientific)

Automated and Intelligent EP Reporting

EP ablation procedures are difficult, but your EP reporting process shouldn’t be. See how GE HealthCare’s Centricity EP Structured Reporting allows for quick, accurate, and complete reporting in as few steps as possible.

The Wire

• HeartBeam & AccurKardia Team Up: As part of a new partnership, HeartBeam will add AccurKardia’s FDA-cleared, device-agnostic automated ECG interpretation platform to its cable-free 3D ECG device. This initial collaboration aims to enhance the accessibility of cardiac monitoring and will focus on making AccurKardia’s AccurECG available on HeartBeam’s credit card-sized device that captures the heart’s electrical signals in three directions and then synthesizes the signals into a 12-lead ECG using a personalized transformation matrix.

• OMNYPULSE’s 100% Acute Success: Early results from the Omny-IRE study suggest Johnson & Johnson’s OMNYPULSE PFA Platform can successfully map and treat symptomatic paroxysmal AFib during ablation. Among 136 patients treated, the OMNYPULSE Platform achieved 100% acute PVI with durable isolation in 84.5% of pulmonary veins at 3-month remapping and a 3.0% primary adverse event rate, with only 0.7% being potentially catheter related.

• PULSAR’s One-Year Outcomes: Continuing with ablation efficacy news, Kardium announced one-year outcomes from its PULSAR IDE study for evaluating the safety and efficacy of its Globe Pulsed Field System for treating paroxysmal AF. Researchers treated 183 patients with the Globe system and found it successfully ablated 94% of pulmonary veins on the first pass, leading to 78% of patients remaining free from paroxysmal AF after 12 months. The procedure only took 96 minutes on average, with ablation lasting 25.5 minutes, and no device-related primary safety events.

• Education for Lowering SBP: A recent JAMA study suggests education and mobile health empowerment (E2) could help better identify and treat patients in the ED with high SBP. Researchers randomized 574 patients to receive standard care or a combined E2 intervention, finding that patients in the education and mobile health group showed a greater mean reduction in SBP (-4.9 mmHg) at six months compared to the standard care group.

• CardioOne Acquires CardioDiagnostics: Expanding its cardiac monitoring offerings, CardioOne acquired CardioDiagnostics to help equip independent cardiology practices with better diagnostic capabilities. CardioOne will integrate CardioDiagnostics’ ECG and remote patient monitoring technologies into its Rhythm stack product line to better serve cardiologists starting their own private practices. The company also plans to use CardioDiagnostics’ technologies to develop its own virtual care offerings for future customers.

• Implicity’s ICD Patient Outcomes: IMPLICITY unveiled new findings from its EVIDENCE-RM study that suggest its IM009² universal monitoring system could have clinical and medico-economic benefits. The study analyzed clinical outcomes and costs for over 69k patients with ICDs and cardiac resynchronization defibrillators, finding that the IM009² platform led to a 26% mortality reduction, 4% decrease in HF hospitalizations, and 17.8% decrease in hospital-related costs.

• Anumana Expands Beyond ECG-AI: Anumana expanded its partnership with Boston Scientific through its Series C funding round to go beyond its diagnostic ECG-AI technology into perioperative and acute cardiac care. The partnership will help accelerate the development of Anumana’s novel generative AI imaging technologies for enhancing precision during complex cardiac interventions. Anumana’s new perioperative offerings will include real-time imaging platforms and algorithms for structural heart, interventional cardiology, and electrophysiology procedures.

• Field Medical’s Series A: Field Medical successfully closed its $40M Series A financing round to support the completion of two pilot studies for its pulsed field ablation platform. The fresh funds will be applied to the VCAS for ventricular tachycardia and Field PULSE for AFib studies as well as continued development of its PFA system. Field Medical is also planning to scale up its operations in preparation for its pivotal VT VERITAS trial.

• Another Balloon Burst for Early IABP in CS: In the Altshock-2 trial, early use of an intra-aortic balloon pump (IABP) in patients with heart failure–related cardiogenic shock (HF-CS) didn’t significantly improve 60-day survival or bridging to heart replacement therapy compared to standard therapy (81% vs. 75%, HR 0.72). This is now another negative trial investigating mortality benefit for IABP use in CS — this time in HF-CS — joining IABP-SHOCK II, which found no benefit in ACS-related cardiogenic shock.

• AI Boosts Calcium Scoring: HeartLung Technologies’ AI-CVD algorithm was used to analyze coronary artery calcium scoring from CT scans and calculate liver steatosis as an opportunistic measure for cardiovascular disease. In a study of 5.7k individuals drawn from the MESA study, AI-CVD was used to create liver attenuation index scores from CAC scans, and people with the highest LAI scores had higher 15-year CVD incidence than the lowest (19% vs. 12%), as well as 43% higher risk of CVD, 77% higher stroke risk, and 36% higher all-cause mortality.

• LuX-Valve for TR: One-year follow-up data from the TRAVEL study suggests that Jenscare Biotechnology’s LuX-Valve could provide another potential alternative to surgery for patients with severe tricuspid regurgitation. The single arm study examined 126 high-risk TR patients who received the LuX-Valve and found 95.2% experienced more mild-or-less regurgitation at 1 year. However, due to the study’s single-arm design, the valve’s performance relative to medical therapy remains unknown and longer-term data is needed to judge durability.

Optum’s Cloud ROI E-book

Learn how to measure costs, define your ROI, and what to look for in a potential vendor when moving your enterprise medical imaging to the cloud. Check out Optum’s e-book now!

Personalized Plaque Analysis Now With Medicare Coverage

Heartflow’s Plaque Analysis is now reimbursable thanks to Medicare’s new coverage for AI-enabled plaque analysis of eligible patients with coronary artery disease.

Cardiology AI: From Research to Clinical Practice

Explore how AI algorithms are reshaping cardiology with insights from Tempus’ recent webinar, featuring Dr. David Ouyang of UCLA and Cedars-Sinai, alongside Tempus’ Dr. John Pfeifer and Dr. Brandon Fornwalt. This expert panel dives into how AI can bridge diagnostic gaps, enhance patient outcomes, and streamline workflows for conditions like AFib and pulmonary hypertension. Read the full recap to glimpse the future of AI-driven cardiology.

The Resource Wire

• Relieving The Burden of Post-Processing: With the advent of advanced imaging technologies like CCTA come added burdens to technologists and diagnostic imaging centers. See how PIA can relieve the burden of post-processing, saving you time while helping your bottom line.

• New Horizons in Structural Heart: TAVR and TMVR rates are rising rapidly, placing more pressure on interventional planning. Tune into this Circle CVI and Radcliffe Cardiology breakout detailing how to leverage modern CT workflows to produce efficient and accurate pre-procedural plans.

• Us2.ai and Fujifilm Automate CVUS: Fujifilm Healthcare Americas and Us2.ai have partnered to equip the LISENDO 880 cardiovascular ultrasound system with an AI-driven clinical workflow solution. Read more about how Us2.ai fully automates the LISENDO 880’s echocardiogram analysis and reporting. 

• Monebo’s Approach to Cardiac Health Monitoring: The heart works day and night, so your cardiac monitoring software should too. Learn about how Monebo’s latest innovation superimposes long-term monitoring results onto a 24-hour circadian cycle scale, creating a comprehensive map of circadian variations.

• Explore Vitrea Advanced Visualization: Discover Canon Medical Healthcare IT’s suite of advanced imaging workflows designed to increase efficiency in cardiovascular imaging, and facilitate the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of cardiovascular diseases. These cutting-edge tools support the delivery of faster, more accurate care while integrating seamlessly into clinical workflow

• Automating and Simplifying CMR Imaging: Watch Vista.ai’s demo on how their intelligent software automates and simplifies image acquisition so all technologists can perform a CMR scan with quality, consistency, and efficiency, increasing throughput and improving patient access.

• Your Cardiology Data is Valuable. Put it To Work. See how one major Midwest health system’s decision to implement Merge Cardio transformed physician and staff workflows, improved data entry speed and accuracy, and increased cost savings.

The Industry Wire

1. Eli Lilly opens new legal front in battle against compounded GLP-1s.
2. Elon Musk’s Neuralink eyes fundraising at $8.5B valuation.
3. NYC Health + Hospitals appoints first Chief AI Officer.
4. California to impose ‘deep cuts’ on high-cost hospitals.
5. UNM Health cuts 53 leadership roles including CFO.
6. NYU Langone notches 2.3% operating margin in Q2 comeback.
7. Marketing execs sentenced to prison for $127M kickback scheme.
8. Hospitals accelerate EHR upgrades in 2025.
9. Cyberattack on Yale New Haven Health impacts 5M patients.
10. Three recent health system rebrands to know.