The Vanta device by Medtronic plc, provides relief from pain for thousands of patients, but the Vanta might also feel the pain when the patient is undergoing cardioversion. According to a field safety notice from Dublin-based Medtronic, two patients in Europe have undergone explant procedures for the device due to damage sustained during cardioversion, but the company urges physicians to pay heed to the labeled indication, which recommends that the device be temporarily reprogrammed to reduce the risk of damage to the device, an action that Medtronic indicated should ward off any such issues.

The U.S FDA 510(k) clearance for Corneat Vision Ltd.’s Everpatch is a “safety stamp” for the product, and the “first step’ in the deployment of Corneat’s synthetic tissue substitute technology, which could displace the use of donor and processed tissue, Almog Aley-Raz, CEO of Corneat, told BioWorld. The Corneat Everpatch, for use in ophthalmic surgeries, is the first non-degradable material that seamlessly embeds itself with surrounding tissue avoiding foreign body response often triggered by implanted devices, Aley-Raz claimed.

Whoever said beauty is only skin deep hasn’t looked below to see what Sientra Inc. has made available there recently. The medical aesthetics company now boasts the only tissue expander cleared in the U.S. for exposure to magnetic resonance imaging, an important screening tool for breast reconstruction patients. Sientra’s CTO Denise Dajles told BioWorld the newly cleared Allox2 Pro Tissue Expander builds on the original expander also cleared by the FDA. “No other expander in the market has an MRI compatibility indication because they are based on a metal, i.e., metallic ports and big magnets in them,” Dajles explained.

General Stim Inc.’s implanted sacral nerve stimulation (SNS) system was approved in China to treat individuals with certain bladder and bowel conditions. Hangzhou-based General Stim’s SNS system consists of a sacral nerve stimulator, an extension lead and an electrode.

The U.S. FDA’s citizen’s petition process doesn’t always yield the desired outcome, but the agency must nonetheless respond to these petitions. Sonex Health Inc., has petitioned the FDA to rethink a proposal to reclassify the company’s SX-One device for treatment of carpal tunnel syndrome, an unusual instance in which a medical device maker has resisted a proposal to make a device exempt from regulatory requirements.

Avenda Health Inc. reported new study results showing its Unfold AI platform, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to map a tumor’s location within the prostate, encapsulates all of the clinically significant cancer present in the gland more effectively than standard care.

Beyond Air Inc. completed a senior secured debt financing of up to $40 million from Avenue Capital Group to support the company’s commercial launch of the Lungfit PH and further development of the Lungfit platform. Beyond Air is focused on applications of nitric oxide for the treatment of patients with a range of respiratory conditions. Its affiliate, Beyond Cancer Ltd., is developing a treatment for solid tumors that uses an ultra-high concentration of nitric oxide.

Surgical care startup Medivis Inc. tallied $20 million in a series A financing led by Thrive Capital. The funds will be used to advance its 3D holographic clinical visualization system. Initialized Capital and Mayo Clinic also participated in the round, along with investors Bob Iger, Kevin Durant, Robert Spetzler, Hugo Barra and Coalition Operators. With the funding from the series A, Medivis has raised a total of roughly $25 million to date.

Gamma imaging is about to move out of the centralized nuclear medicine department and to the point of care, with the start of a U.S. study of a portable device Seracam, under development by Serac Imaging Systems Ltd. The study, at Ohio State University, will compare the performance of Seracam to its larger, fixed, counterpart in imaging the same patients, on the same day.

Boston Scientific Corp. said that three-year primary patency and the four-year freedom from target lesion revascularization (TLR) rate for patients treated with the Ranger drug-coated balloon (DCB), in the Ranger II superficial femoral artery (SFA) study, are the best ever reported data for randomized trials using DCBs.