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Bodily Aging & The Heart, Cordis’ DEB Approved, and Donor Acceptance
By Viktor Zarev, Virginia Hunt
September 24, 2026
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Together with
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“It’s not enough for a great nation merely to have added new years to life. Our objective must also be to add new life to those years.”
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President John F. Kennedy on aging and what we would come to call “health span.”
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My receding hairline and first gray hairs have already been making me think about aging more and more, but today’s top story reminds me that aging gracefully is probably more about my heart health than my hairstyle.
Thanks for reading,
Vik
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Cardiovascular events often seem to strike suddenly as we age, with some physicians arguing that they’re inevitable. Now a new JAMA Cardiology analysis suggests that the way our bodies age may clue-in cardiovascular trouble earlier than expected.
- The heart is a muscle, and like all muscles, its performance decreases with age due to wall thickening, stiffer valves, lower maximum heart rate, pacing issues, etc.
- Although we know what happens to the heart as we age, it’s less clear how other aging factors like frailty, brain function, and physical ability impact the heart.
To find the link between bodily aging and the heart, researchers followed 12k older adults (ages 65-70+ paired with matched controls) who were all free of prior CVD, dementia, or significant disability. They measured three aging criteria annually for 14 years – frailty, intrinsic capacity, and physical health-related quality of life.
- Frailty = calculated from the 64-item Frailty Index and Fried phenotype frailty
- Intrinsic capacity = a combo of cognitive, locomotor, vitality, and psychological features.
- Physical health-related QoL (HRQOL) = a 12-item short form physical exam.
Over the years an intriguing trend emerged: People who went on to have a CV event showed measurable functional decline across those three categories more than a decade beforehand.
- Specifically, those patients showed higher frailty, lower intrinsic capacity, and poorer physical HRQOL over the ten years leading to their CV event.
- Roughly five years before a CV event, those three aging factors compounded with each other, leading to accelerated bodily deterioration compared to control patients.
While those timelines sound frightening, not all CVD types developed on the same schedule.
- Patients who eventually developed HF and fatal coronary heart disease saw their functional decreases begin 10+ years before their first event.
- Meanwhile MI and stroke emerged after fewer years of deterioration, so they may have a shorter warning window when it comes to aging.
These outcomes might seem obvious, but the value of this study is the proposed timeline that measuring a patient’s functional decline can give us.
- In this case, factors like frailty, intrinsic capacity, and HRQOL may be an early way to detect the multisystem aging that culminates in CVD.
The Takeaway
Getting older is inevitable and immutable, but how we age may be more important for our cardiovascular health than we realize. This study gives a glimpse into that importance, and the clues a patient’s aging trajectory can give us for their CVD risk.
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Pulmonary Hypertension Detection With a Single Echo Clip
Pulmonary hypertension is often diagnosed late, when irreversible vascular remodelling has already occurred. That’s changing, however, with Us2.ai’s spatiotemporal transformer technology that can process apical four-chamber echo and accurately detects pulmonary hypertension far beyond the single-view echocardiographic benchmark.
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Closing the Cardiology Care Gap with AI
Hear from Viz.ai’s Chief Medical Officer, Tim Showalter, MD and Northeast Georgia Medical Center’s Dr. Ugo Egolum on how AI-enabled ECG and echo screening can uncover at-risk CA patients before they become symptomatic.
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Circadian Rhythms Revolutionize Cardiac Monitoring
Understanding a patient’s natural circadian rhythms can reveal deeper insights during cardiac monitoring. Find out how Monebo’s monitoring approach provides a visual representation of heart rate, cardiac muscle relaxation, and QT-RR throughout the circadian cycle.
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- A DEB Challenger Arrives: Cordis received FDA approval for its SELUTION SLR Drug-Eluting Balloon (DEB) for treating coronary in-stent restenosis (ISR). The approval makes SELUTION just the second balloon device for ISR patients after Boston Scientific’s AGENT, however it delivers sustained sirolimus while AGENT delivers paclitaxel. Both drugs result in similar outcomes, but are mechanistically different, so individual patients could benefit from one over the other. SELUTION’s approval stems from the SELUTION4ISR study that showed the DEB’s non-inferiority when compared standard of care like drug-eluting stents.
- Inflammation’s Impact on The Heart: A new EJPC study adds evidence that chronic inflammation is a major part of cardiovascular risk. Taking a cell signaling approach, researchers measured glycoprotein acetyl (GlycA) levels in 488k UK Biobank participants while analyzing 80 different inflammatory proteins and looking for genetic causes of environmental inflammation in each patient. Patients with higher GlycA levels faced reduced LV end-diastolic volume, stroke volume, and increased heart rate. Specifically, patients with the top 20% of GlycA levels had a 43% higher MACE risk, likely mediated by the IL-1 and TNF cytokines.
- UltraSight Expands Financing: UltraSight raised $24M ($39M to date) in Series B2 financing to support the U.S. commercial expansion of its Echosystem AI-guidance software for cardiac ultrasound. The fresh funds will also support the development of intensive care units and circulatory support workflows. UltraSight’s Echosystem notched FDA clearance in 2023 and is currently deployed across roughly 10 commercial sites. While a sizable funding round, it’s worth noting that UltraSight’s POCUS guidance approach directly competes with GE HealthCare, HeartFocus, and Aisap for market share.
- Obicetrapib Approved in EU: Big news for the LDL-C reduction crowd, the European Commission granted marketing authorization for NewAmsterdam & Menarini’s Ubeslo (obicetrapib) and Evlarco (obicetrapib plus ezetimibe). This marks obicetrabip’s first global regulatory approval, and it’s indicated for patients with primary hypercholesterolemia. Obicetrapib has already shown it can reduce LDL-C by up to 40% when taken alone, and by roughly 50% when combined with ezetimibe. Menarini holds obicetrapib’s European commercialization rights while NewAmsterdam will receive sales royalties and up to €833M in milestone payments.
- PCCT for Checking TAVR Valves: Although expensive and mostly confined to the top imaging centers, time-resolved photon-counting CT could be used to assess valve function after TAVR. One single-center study evaluated 71 post-TAVR PCCT scans in 63 patients, finding that CT-derived transvalvular pressure gradients correlated strongly with echocardiography results, with no bias for mean gradient. In fact, the patients’ CT-derived mean gradient was excellent for detecting potential valve dysfunction (AUC of 0.94 with ~89% sensitivity and specificity), so PCCT’s use could expand toward functional valve assessment by evaluating both anatomic and hemodynamic data.
- Aggressive Donor Acceptance Doesn’t Hurt: As donor organ shortages become more common, “aggressive acceptance” practices like older organs, more DCD hearts, and greater travel are too – but this doesn’t seem to worsen outcomes. A study of 5.4k adult heart transplants across 106 transplant centers found that one-year recipient survival rates were similar regardless of restrictive, intermediate, or aggressive acceptance practices. Severe primary graft dysfunction, stroke, and hemodialysis rates were also comparable, so broader donor organ acceptance could help increase access to life saving replacements.
- Pushback on ABIM Procedure Counts: Interventional cardiologists are again challenging the American Board of Internal Medicine’s maintenance-of-certification requirements, specifically asking to end procedural volume thresholds like the mandated 100 PCIs over two years. As part of the struggle, SCAI published a draft position statement arguing that procedure counts no longer ensure safety and burden physicians, especially in rural or late-career settings. Furthermore, a SCAI survey found that 73% of respondents felt volume requirements aren’t necessary for patient safety, with outcomes-based, local evaluations better measuring competence.
- A Strengthened HFpEF Score: As HFpEF remains underdiagnosed, the hunt for the best diagnostic scoring system continues. A JACC study offers up LEDA, which uses four transthoracic echocardiography factors in scoring. Among 171 patients, LEDA showed better discrimination than H2FPEF (0.85 vs. 0.74), which the ACC recently labeled clinically superior to other systems. When compared to other scoring systems, HFpEF patients were 7.4x more likely to have high LEDA scores compared to 3.0x for H2FPEF, 1.8x for HFA-PEFF, and 1.6x for ASE criteria.
- AFib Gene Therapy Grant: Inomagen Therapeutics secured its second NIH Small Business Innovation Research grant to develop gene therapies for treating AFib. Back in 2021, the company nabbed $3.67M to create plasmid-based transgenes and a non-ablative, catheter-based delivery system. Now, Inomagen hopes to move into preclinical studies to decrease expression of genes associated with oxidative stress and fight against atrial remodelling with an initial $1.4M in first-year funding. Altogether, the company could earn up to $2.9M in support over the next two years.
- HighLife Hauls in $91.6M: HighLife grabbed $91.6M in late-stage funding to support European commercial expansion of its TMVR system for high-risk patients ineligible for TEER— plus a big U.S. research push. It’s been a busy year for HighLife, with January bringing a CE mark for its TMVR system and July’s CE mark for the next-generation Clarity Valve. Now, the funding boost will motor the clinical stage of HighLife’s U.S. pivotal study, over two years after the FDA granted an Investigational Device Exemption.
- Advancing Redo AFib Ablation: AFib resurfaces in about one third of patients who’ve had redo ablations, but early data from Rhythm AI’s STAR Apollo mapping system suggests that the number could soon shrink. Among 50 patients undergoing redo ablation guided by the AI-enabled STAR system, 75% of patients were AFib free and 83% were in sinus rhythm after one year. The procedure proved safe and feasible, but, because the study lacked comparison to other treatments, more data will be needed before STAR can be named superior.
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How to Streamline Your Reporting Process
Like many medical centers, Baystate lacked a single cardiovascular database to streamline the documentation process and ensure accuracy. Read this Optum case report to learn how Baystate improved its percentage of unsigned charges within a 5-day window from a high of 89% to under 10%.
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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.
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Earlier Detection, Better Outcomes
When it comes to heart disease, early detection is crucial to a patient’s long-term health. Learn more about how Fujifilm helps clinicians achieve that with the Lisendo 880 cardiovascular ultrasound system’s unique solutions that detect early abnormalities seen in heart failure, while offering insight into cardiac functions and groundbreaking hemodynamic analysis.
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- Merge Cardio 12.5 is Officially Available! From AI-generated echo measurements to upgraded UI and reports, Merge Cardio 12.5 brings a long list of new innovations to the table. Find out more about how Merge Cardio’s latest version streamlines workflows to make your cardiovascular service line more cost-effective and patient-centered.
- Circle CVI’s cvi42 v6.5 is Now Live! Cardiovascular imaging plays a critical role in helping care teams with everything from prevention to procedural planning. That’s why Circle Cardiovascular Imaging released v6.5 of its cvi42 software with features like automated phase offset correction, editable plaque segmentation, and quantitative perfusion to support every aspect of CV imaging workflows
- Canon’s 30 Years of Caring: For over 30 years, Canon has helped advance pediatric interventional cardiology through innovation and a commitment to better care. Learn more about how and why modern pediatric cardiac angiography came to be from one of its founding members, Dr. John P. Cheatham.
- How AI Expands the Role of CMR Experts: If you’re an MRI technologist, AI could be the best thing that ever happened to your career. Read here to learn about the benefits of AI for CMR experts and how it can accelerate both your training and career.
- State-of-the-Art Cardiac Monitoring at Scale: Cleared for 13 different heart rhythm interpretations, AccurKardia’s AccurECG 2.0 shortens the time from an arrhythmia incident to clinical intervention. Watch here to find out how AccurKardia and Specialized Medical are teaming up to bring the AccurECG 2.0 technology to clinicians across the U.S.
- ALL‑RISE Trial Results Are In: The CathWorks FFRangio™ system met noninferiority to wire-based physiology for MACE at one year with statistically significant improvement in resource utilization and reduced procedure time. CathWorks FFRangio™ system is the new standard in coronary physiology. See the ALL-RISE data. The information provided by the CathWorks FFRangio™ system is intended to be used by a qualified clinician in conjunction with the patient’s clinical history, symptoms, and other diagnostic tests, as well as the clinician’s professional evaluation. Source: Fearon et al. NEJM 2026. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa2600949
- VASCADE MVP® XL Vascular Closure System: Sometimes EP procedures call for a venous vascular closure system that is simply bigger. Haemonetics’ VASCADE MVP XL closure system comes with 58% more collagen and a 9% larger disc compared to the VASCADE MVP system as well as an expanded indication for utilizing 10-14F inner diameter sheaths.
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