Abbott last week announced CE Mark approval for the company's new Advisor HD Grid Mapping Catheter, Sensor Enabled, a product designed to advance cardiac mapping during cardiac ablation to treat patients with complex cardiac arrhythmias. With the European launch of this latest addition to Abbott’s electrophysiology portfolio, the company is offering physicians a mapping catheter with what it calls a first-of-its-kind grid configuration of electrodes for improved data collection that supports the creation of high-density mapping of cardiac tissue to support optimal treatment for patients.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that International Laboratories LLC is voluntarily recalling Lot# 117099A of Clopidogrel Tablets, USP 75 mg, packaged in bottles of 30 tablets, to the consumer level due to mislabeling. The product is labeled as Clopidogrel Tablets USP, 75 mg but may contain Clopidogrel 75mg or Simvastatin Tablets USP 10 mg.


January 18, 2018 — Change Healthcare announced the acquisition of National Decision Support Company (NDSC), a leader in cloud-based clinical decision support (CDS) software that delivers medical guidelines to the point of care in electronic medical record (EMR) systems. The addition of NDSC accelerates the efforts of Change Healthcare to leverage evidence-based clinical information and next-generation technologies to help reduce healthcare costs and ensure appropriate care.


January 18, 2018 – West Hills Hospital & Medical Center, a full-service acute care facility, announces the first completion of the Tryton Side Branch Stent in the San Fernando Valley. This unique stent is engineered to treat coronary bifurcation lesions involving large side branches.

January 18, 2018 – Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices Companies announced that Biosense Webster, Inc., a worldwide leader in the diagnosis and treatment of heart arrhythmias, enrolled the first patient in the WaveCrest Investigational Device Exemption (IDE) Trial.

Here is a list of what I think were some of the top interventional technologies discussed at the 2017 Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) annual meeting this past fall. These technology areas have the biggest potential to impact clinical practice and received a lot of attention at this year’s meeting.   

Bioresorbable Stents Suffer a Setback


There was no shortage of interest in bioresorbable stent technologies at the many sessions offered on this topic or based on the number of start-up bioresorbable stent companies presenting at the 2017 Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) meeting. However, there was noticeable apprehension at the meeting about what the future of the technology will be.


Philips recently announced the launch of Technology Maximizer, a cross-modality program designed to boost the clinical capabilities and performance of imaging equipment through proactive upgrades. Technology Maximizer provides confidence to radiology and cardiology department leaders and clinicians that their systems are up to date and compliant at a fraction of the cost of individual upgrades, according to Philips.

The Society for Vascular Ultrasound (SVU), the Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS) and Medstreaming-M2S announced the development of the Vascular Quality Initiative (VQI) Vascular Ultrasound Registry. This Registry represents an expansion of the SVS VQI, which will combine noninvasive (vascular ultrasound) testing data with vascular treatment and outcomes data, making it possible to analyze the relationships between diagnosis and care provided to patients with vascular disease.

Subscribe Now