Health Canada approved Abbott’s Xience V drug-eluting stent, which the Chicago-based colossus said it plans to bring to market north of the border immediately.
The device, which competes with Boston Scientific‘s Taxus product, uses a different drug, everolimus, than the paclitaxel-eluting Taxus. The drugs are designed to inhibit the re-growth of vascular tissue around the mesh-like stent.
Abbott touts its device as “the only drug-eluting stent to have demonstrated superiority over the Taxus” in a pair of clinical trials, which it says show a 45 percent reduction in the risk of major adverse cardiac events up to three years after implantation, compared with the Taxus, and a lower rate of vascular tissue re-growth.
News of the three-year results sent Boston Scientific’s stock into a swoon in March. And Taxus sales were off 25 percent during the second quarter.
Some good news for the local leviathan: A a pair of recent studies indicating that the Taxus performs well against Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Cordis Corp.’s Cypher sirolimus-eluting stent and that its Taxus Express system fares well when implanted in multiple vessels in a single patient.