Chest pain may still be angina even when the main heart arteries look clear. Using cardiac stress MRI (a heart scan that measures blood flow with magnetic resonance imaging), testing uncovered small vessel problems in about half of participants in a study of people who had prior coronary angiography that indicated no obstructive coronary artery disease.

Adults with heart disease prescribed vitamin D in doses tailored to reach blood levels considered optimal for heart health (>40-80 ng/mL) had a reduced risk of heart attack by more than half (52%) compared to those who did not receive monitoring of vitamin D levels.

Earlier blood transfusion after major surgery – when hemoglobin was below 10 g/dL rather than beow 7 g/dl - did not affect the risk of severe complications, such as death, heart attack, need for a heart procedure, kidney failure or stroke.

Standard care, which included medication for those eligible, was better than a promising minimally invasive procedure for people with irregular heart rhythms who had high stroke and bleeding risk.

Results from the international VESALIUS-CV (TIMI 66) clinical trial found that among adults with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) or diabetes and no history of a prior heart attack or stroke, the PCSK9 inhibitor evolocumab reduced the risk of coronary heart disease death, heart attack, or ischemic stroke by 25%.

Injectable weight-loss drugs can reduce the risk of serious cardiovascular events for people with type 2 diabetes. Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and Harvard Medical School have demonstrated this in using insurance claims data. They found that semaglutide and tirzepatide – marketed as Ozempic and Mounjaro – reduced the risk of serious cardiovascular events by up to 18 percent.

In cases of mild congenital heart defects, more prenatal visits are associated with greater likelihood of appropriate delivery at a community hospital, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open. Results suggest that more prenatal care is beneficial for families and may allow their newborns with mild heart defects to receive the right level of care closer to home, as opposed to traveling to a regional cardiac surgical center, which can be expensive, taxing and stressful for families.