Global medical device goliath St. Jude Medical (NYSE:STJ) announced good news for several of its cardiac devices this week, touting product releases in India and first use of the Portico transcatheter aortic heart valve.
STJ’s Portico valve was implanted in a patient for the first time in a procedure performed at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver, British Columbia, the company announced today.
The valve, which is made of bovine pericardial tissue, is designed to increase physicians’ control and placement accuracy during implantation.
Portico is the only valve that can be re-sheathed in the delivery catheter, repositioned at the implant site, or retrieved before it is released from the delivery system, according to the release.
In more good news for STJ’s heart devices, the St. Paul, Minn.-based company’s India office announced that it initiated Indian launch of its Unify cardiac resynchronisation therapy defibrillator (CRT-D) and Fortify implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICD), which the company says are "the smallest available device footprint in the industry," according to the release.
The smaller devices require smaller points of insertion, so physicians can close the wounds faster and there is less scarring. The Unify and Fortify devices can also deliver the highest energy levels – 40 joules – of any available device in the industry.
The news is much better for STJ’s Indian presence than March headlines reporting the arrest of company CEO Daniel Starks at a Delhi airport after authorities detained him for having a single round of live ammunition in a pocket of his cargo pants. Starks was released a day later.
The Unify and Fortify devices are also commercially available in the U.S. and Europe, STJ spokeswoman Marisa Bluestone told MedCity News.
