Medtronic has agreed to pay the U.S. $23.5 million to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claim Act by using physician payments related to two post-market studies and two device registries as kickbacks to induce doctors to implant the companys pacemakers and defibrillators.

Sens. Dan Coats and Kelly Ayotte, Republicans of Indiana and New Hampshire, respectively, have introduced a Senate version of the FDA Mission Reform Act, which was submitted to the House in October by Michigan Republican Mike Rogers.

While most consider non-cardiac chest pain (NCCP) a benign condition that infrequently leads to death, a study published Dec. 1 in the European Heart Journal found that this may not be the case. Patients discharged from a Scottish hospital with NCCP were at a measurable risk of death within a year of initial presentation. And patients who had a previous psychiatric hospitalization also had higher rates of short-term all-cause cardiovascular disease-related mortality.

In an era of inexpensive statins, treating all Americans in the U.S. who are at intermediate risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) with statins (men and women) and aspirin (men only) is effective and less expensive than stress testing and treating only those patients with a positive result, according to a simulation study published online Dec. 5 of Circulation.

While overall imaging costs are increasing faster than overall Medicare cancer care costs, 18F-FDG PET or PET/CT account for approximately 1.5 percent of Medicare cancer care expenditures, according to an economic analysis published online in a December supplement to the Journal of Nuclear Medicine.

A high percentage of older adults continue to report receiving cancer screenings, despite ambiguity of recommendations and the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force guidelines recommending against routine screening for breast, cervical, colorectal and prostate cancer for patients age 75 and older, according to a report published in the Dec. 12/26 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine. An accompanying commentary acknowledged the high rates of cancer screenings, but argued that an ideal cancer screening model is hard to define.

There has been little annual change in the enrollment numbers for radiologic technology programs as the number of first-year students in 2011 was relatively steady compared with 2010, according to the Enrollment Snapshot of Radiography, Radiation Therapy and Nuclear Medicine Technology Programs conducted by the American Society of Radiologic Technologists (ASRT).

Patients facing an x-ray or nuclear medicine examination can now turn to a website created by Siemens Healthcare for information on medical radiation.