Rising temperatures stemming from global climate change may increase the number of infants born with congenital heart defects (CHD) in the U.S. over the next two decades, according to new research in the Journal of the American Heart Association.1 This may also result in as many as 7,000 additional cases over an 11 year-period in eight representative states — Arkansas, Texas, California, Iowa, North Carolina, Georgia, New York and Utah.

Rivaroxaban is among four new oral anticoagulants (NOAC) now recommended by atrial fibrillation guidelines over the old standard of warfarin.

January 30, 2019 — Updated atrial fibrillation (AFib) treatment guidelines released this week now recommend new oral anticoagulants (NOACs) as the preferred alternative to warfarin for reducing the risk of stroke.
The Boston Scientific Eluvia self-expanding, drug-eluting peripheral stent. It outperformed the Cook Zilver stent in the IMPERIAL Trial presented at TCT 2018.
Intact Vascular Inc. developed the Tack Endovascular System to repair artery dissections caused by balloon angioplasty. Rather than using a full-sized stent, this system "tacks" the vessel wall with a very short stent of only a few millimeters to avoid encasing the vessel with metal, which can lead to high restenosis rates.
The LimFlow System enables a transcatheter bypass graft to be created from the tibial vein from the tibial artery to avoid foot amputations in CLI patients. Self-expanding, covered stents are used to line the entire vein and transfer point into the artery to create a bypass circuit to restore blood flow to the foot.

In recent years, there has been a lot of focus by vendors on developing better stenting technologies to treat peripheral artery disease (PAD). Part of this has been fueled by the rising numbers of peripheral interventional procedures for PAD, critical limb ischemia (CLI, also called chronic limb-threatening ischemia) and limb salvage to prevent amputation. But new technology development also has been spurred by the need to reduce extremely high restenosis rates.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cleared the Magnetom Lumina 3 Tesla (3T) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner from Siemens Healthineers.

XableCath Inc., announced that its XableCath blunt and abrasion tip catheters were cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as peripheral crossing catheters. The catheters have been safely and successfully used to cross challenging lesions in both arterial chronic total occlusions (CTOs) and chronic obstructive venous lesions. The recent crossing FDA clearance adds to the previous clearances for endovascular support.

Thubrikar Aortic Valve Inc. announced the first human implant of the Optimum TAV using their transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) system.

LivaNova PLC announced the publication of three separate studies highlighting the performance of its sutureless aortic valve, Perceval.

The Medtronic Resolute Integrity drug-eluting stent is among the top three stents on the U.S. market. Outcomes for these stents are very similar, so the stents have largely become a commodity product purchased on price rather than clinical data. Stent advances and new stent technologies.
This is a closeup view of the Boston Scientific Synergy stent, which uses a bioresorbable drug-carrier polymer only on the abluminal side of the stent where it is needed. Clinical data shows lower rates of late-stent thrombosis using this technology. Stent advances and new technology.

There was a lot of hype and high hopes pinned on bioresorbable stent technologies as the way of the future two years ago. But the Absorb stent was not able to match the performance or outcomes of the current standard-of-care metallic drug-eluting stents (DES). Since the Absorb was pulled off the market in 2017, vendors have refocused efforts on refining metallic DES. 
Subscribe to
© Copyright Wainscot Media. All Rights Reserved.
Subscribe Now