The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will provide coverage for the use of Left Ventricular Assist Devices (LVADs), heart pumps for chronic end stage heart failure patients who are ineligible for heart transplant, giving hope to thousands of desperately ill heart patients.

Dr. Louis U. Bigliani, a leading expert in the treatment of shoulder disorders and Director of Orthopedic Surgery at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, was recently honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the New York Chapter of the Arthritis Foundation.

Joseph Angeletti, Jr., a development specialist with 20 years of experience at leading non-profit institutions, has been appointed Campaign Director at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. In this position, Mr. Angeletti will oversee a major fundraising drive aimed at enhancing clinical care programs and supporting the Hospital's commitment to providing the highest quality patient care. He will report to Larry Schafer, Vice President of Development.

A noted authority in health-care operations, strategy and policy, Wayne Osten has been appointed senior vice president and director of the NewYork-Presbyterian Healthcare System. In this role he will direct System activities aimed at fostering quality patient care, research and educational initiatives among the more than 40 System member health-care facilities in the New York City metropolitan area.

Urologists at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital will make a presentation on the medical and ethical guidelines for post-mortem sperm retrieval (PMSR) in the context of successful pregnancies resulting from PMSR and increased public demand for the procedure. The presentation is one of several to be made by NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital urologists at the American Urological Association (AUA) meeting in Chicago on April 26.

Physician-scientists at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and Weill Cornell Medical College have shown that low-dose computed tomography (CT) screening for lung cancer may not only improve a lung cancer patient's chances for a cure, but is also likely to be cost-effective when compared with other widely accepted cancer screening methods.

The International Center for Health Outcomes and Innovation Research (InCHOIR), a joint initiative of Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and the Department of Surgery at Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons, has received a $23 million grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) to serve as the Data Coordinating Center for a newly established Cardiothoracic Surgery Investigations Network. The Network brings together leading medical institutions to develop multiple, multi-center trials of novel diagnostic and therapeutic interventions in the field of cardiac surgery in order to evaluate the safety and efficacy of these interventions as they move from laboratory science to broad clinical use.

Among stroke survivors, one common difficulty is foot drop, a partial leg paralysis that prevents the foot from lifting -- causing instability and difficulty walking. Now, a new high-tech rehabilitation device -- available in the New York City-area only at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center -- helps these patients regain the ability to walk more naturally and improve mobility.