Attendees at this year’s EuroPCR conference in Paris cast a wary eye on medical device makers’ efforts to promote renal denervation in treatment of hypertension, taking to Twitter to note and sometimes chide companies for putting "marketing before science."
Renal denervation fell hard this year from a golden child of hypertension treatment to an industry black sheep after Medtronic’s (NYSE:MDT) highly anticipated Symplicity HTN-3 failed to show that the device was effective. Renal denervation has not been approved by the FDA for treatment of hypertension in the U.S., but the device has been on the market in Europe for some time.
The clinical trial flop and the high-profile backlash that followed that hasn’t stopped Medtronic and other device makers from pushing the technology, Forbes contributor Larry Husten wrote.
"Surprisingly – or perhaps not – renal denervation is still being heavily promoted in Europe," Husten wrote.
A number of EuroPCR attendees scolded device makers for promoting ablation in a series of presentations and ads positioned around the conference. Noteworthy tweets from Brigham & Women’s Hospital interventional cardiologist @Jeddacath and Christ Hospital cardiac electrophysiology director Edward Schloss (@EJSMD) got a lot of attention.
Advertising in the Paris metro for $MDT renal denervation. As if Simplicity HTN-3 never happened #EuroPCR2014 pic.twitter.com/nl241KtSmr
— Jeddacath (@Jeddacath) May 21, 2014
.@Jeddacath @kwoolfmd @cardiobrief Pretty absurd. Hey @MDTinnovation @MDT_Cardiac: Wanna respond? You should be embarrassed.
— Edward J Schloss MD (@EJSMD) May 21, 2014
Schloss further created a "Storify" time line to track renal denervation marketing at EuroPCR this year, including the ad noted by @Jeddacath as well as sessions sponsored by Medtronic and Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ).
MassDevice insights: Will renal denervation for hypertension recover from Symplicity-3?
Take this two minute predictive intelligence survey to help determine where the market thinks renal denervation for hypertension is going.
Covidien collects experts to talk drug-coated balloons
Covidien (NYSE:COV) is hosting a panel tomorrow that brings together a group of leaders in vascular medicine to talk about peripheral artery disease and treatment with drug-coated balloons.
Drug-coated balloons are looking to displace traditional bare balloons, the gold standard in treating PAD, a common vascular disease associated with heart attack, stroke, amputation and death.
Read more
Medtronic reveals 2-year ‘real world’ data on CoreValve
Medtronic (NYSE:MDT) unveiled new data on its CoreValve transcatheter heart valve, reporting that the device continued to show low rates of mortality and stroke.
The results included more than 1,000 patients with severe aortic stenosis who were treated with the CoreValve implant, with results falling roughly in line with those seen at 1 month and 1 year, the company said.
Read more
Boston Scientific’s Synergy stent looking good at 3 years
Boston Scientific’s (NYSE:BSX) Synergy stent continued to perform strongly at 3 years, according to results from the company’s EVOLVE study.
Read more
TAVI: Boston Scientific touts 6-month data on Lotus valve
Boston Scientific (NYSE:BSX) released 6-month data on its Lotus transcatheter aortic valve, reporting near 80% freedom from paravalvular leakage.
Read more
Neovasc unveils a 1st look at its Tiara mitral valve
Neovasc (CVE:NVC); (OTC:NVCIF) reported the 1st clinical results from early studies of its Tiara transcatheter mitral valve, used to treat 2 patients in Canada. Both patients were implanted successfully without paravalvular leak, Neovasc reported.
Read more
