SAN FRANCISCO – Mitraclip from Abbott Park, Ill.-based Abbott Laboratories, has long been the only minimally invasive mitral valve repair device that's approved by the FDA. Edwards Lifesciences Corp., of Irvine, Calif., aims to challenge that dominance with its Pascal. This week at the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) conference, positive one-year data from the small CLASP study on Pascal were presented, offering a further glimpse of data for comparison.

SAN FRANCISCO – The accelerating confluence of information technology and medical devices is transforming the latter into a true embodiment of med tech. That was the conclusion of early keynote sessions at the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) that began here yesterday.