Boston Scientific (Natick, Massachusetts) has received approval for additions to its Mini ICD line, and X4 CRT-D family of devices. The company reported receiving FDA approval for the Dynagen Mini and Inogen Mini ICDs, as well as the Dynagen X4 and Inogen X4 CRT-Ds.
Eight months ago, TransEnterix (Research Triangle Park, North Carolina) was acquired by SafeStitch (Miami) and became a publicly traded company (Medical Device Daily, Sept. 5, 2013). Through this action, TransEnterix, which develops the SurgiBot, a minimally invasive surgical robotic system that allows the surgeon to be patient-side within the sterile field, began a significant chapter in its history.
On-X Life Technologies (Austin, Texas), whose mechanical heart valves have been implanted in more than 150,000 patients in more than 90 countries, reported that results from an independent, 50-year retrospective study show that On-X mechanical heart valves have "the lowest incidence of valve thrombosis" among the eight different valves that were studied.
CardioKinetix (Menlo Park, California), a firm that's in the process of developing a catheter-based treatment for heart failure, reported results of a pooled analysis study of the first-of-its-kind catheter-based Parachute Ventricular Partitioning device. Twelve-month clinical results from 111 consecutive U.S. and European patients with ischemic heart failure were presented last week, at the American College of Cardiology (Washington) annual meeting, by Philip Adamson, MD, medical director at the Heart Failure Institute at Oklahoma Heart Hospital.