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Last May, a widely reported study concluded that errant electronic noise from iPods can cause implantable cardiac pacemakers to malfunction. This just didn't sound right to the cardiac electrophysiologists at Children's Hospital Boston, who've seen hundreds of children, teens and young adults with pacemakers. Their own just-reported study finds no effect of digital music players on pacemaker function.

On March 26, 2008, surgeons at UC-San Diego Medical Center removed an inflamed appendix through a patient's vagina, a first in the United States. The patient reported only minor discomfort. Key to these surgical clinical trials is collaboration with medical device companies to develop new minimally-invasive tools.

In a comparison of anticoagulants and stents for use with angioplasty following a heart attack, the anticoagulants abciximab and tirofiban had similar outcomes for some cardiac measures within 90 minutes after the procedure, while patients who received stents that released the drug sirolimus had a lower risk of major adverse cardiac events within 8 months than patients who received uncoated stents, according to a new study.

Green tea can help beat superbugs according to Egyptian scientists. Green tea is a very common beverage in Egypt, and it is quite likely that patients will drink green tea while taking antibiotics.

A new finding may account for why the flu virus is more infectious in cold winter temperatures than during the warmer months. At winter temperatures, the virus's outer covering, or envelope, hardens to a rubbery gel that could shield the virus as it passes from person to person, the researchers have found. At warmer temperatures, however, the protective gel melts to a liquid phase. But this liquid phase apparently isn't tough enough to protect the virus against the elements, and so the virus loses its ability to spread from person to person.

Researchers have succeeded in synthesizing porous nanoparticles that are capable of absorbing the energy of two photons in the near infrared spectrum, and then re-emitting radiation used for medical imaging by fluorescence. These two-photon nanoparticles should enable the more precise detection of tumor cells and, in the longer term, better-targeted therapy.

The production of complex, multicellular tissues such as skin or blood vessels can now be envisaged, due to the development of a bioreactor with a "decoy effect." This novel, patented bioreactor enabling the culture and co-culture of cells of different types is a world first.

A child spikes a high fever like clockwork every 3-6 weeks, sometimes as high as 104 or 105 degrees, and sometimes causing seizures. No infection or any other cause is ever found. Yet, according to a new report tonsillectomy is almost always curative. The reason remains a mystery, but desperate families are opting for surgery as a last-ditch measure and finding it to be life-changing.