Major medtech players presented a range of intriguing studies at a gathering of some of the biggest names in the cardiology tech space.
Some of the hottest topics were covered this past week at the American College of Cardiology’s Annual Scientific Session Together With the World Congress of Cardiology (ACC.23/WCC) in New Orleans.
Ablation, cardiac implants, monitors and imaging technology represented a handful of the technologies on display. Medtronic, Abbott, Boston Scientific, Edwards and more offered new data on their innovative technologies in these areas.
Here are some of the biggest stories that came out of the cardiology conference.
Excitement builds around using pulsed-field ablation to treat AFib
Medtronic, Boston Scientific and Johnson & Johnson MedTech’s Biosense Webster all released news about their ablation systems.
Boston Scientific completed the first enrollment in its Advantage AF clinical trial evaluating the Farapulse PFA system. Farapulse uses pulsed-field ablation to treat persistent AFib. Boston Scientific expects positive trial outcomes to support FDA approval.
Medtronic then announced that its PulseSelect pulsed-field ablation (PFA) system exceeded its safety performance goal in a clinical trial. The Pulsed AF trial exceeded the threshold for its efficacy performance goal for the treatment of AFib, too.
Finally, Biosense Webster announced the first cases with its investigational Thermocool SmartTouch SF dual energy catheter for treating AFib. The system enables doctors to toggle between PFA and radiofrequency ablation. It could compete against another ablation device in Medtronic’s portfolio — the Sphere-9 system. That came as part of Medtronic’s $1 billion acquisition of Affera, completed in August 2022.
Analysts also had their say on the prevalence of ablation technologies.
“We expect PFA technologies to be adopted quickly, as so far they seem to be faster and safer than thermal ablation approaches, and the single-shot approach to pulmonary vein isolation (PVI) is likely to take share from cryoablation,” BTIG analyst Marie Thibault wrote in a report. “Whether efficacy will be improved is still an open question. We remain bullish on PFA as a technology class and note there are several other public and private players developing competing approaches.”
