PARIS — After selling its lighting division, Royal Philips (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) made a strategic decision to expand its healthcare division as a stand-alone business. In December 2014, Philips announced it would pay $1.2 billion to acquire Volcano Corporation (San Diego), a leader in the fast-growing interventional cardiology segment.

PARIS — The launch of renal denervation for the control of resistant hypertension is destine to become a textbook case study in how not to market a medical device.

PARIS — Calling all interventional cardiologists. Your skills are needed in brain surgery. Stat! Stopping short of a general alarm, the EuroPCR (Paris Course on Revascularization; Paris) organization has formally issued a call to action to mobilize its growing army of interventional cardiologists to help organize stroke intervention centers.

PARIS — The second patient to receive a fully implantable artificial heart made by Carmat (Paris) died May 2, after a rescue operation at the University Hospital Center (Nantes, France) aimed at replacing a malfunctioning heart that had kept him alive for nine months (Medical Device Daily, May 7, 2015).