Intuitive Surgical (NSDQ:ISRG) president & CEO Gary Guthart doesn’t believe in taking a passive approach to men’s health.
Prostate
Derivatives lawsuit stayed against Intuitive Surgical
Intuitive Surgical (NSDQ:ISRG) and some of its shareholders agreed to stay a lawsuit filed against the medical device company over allegedly misleading statements made during the height of the economic downturn in 2008 and 2009.
Intuitive Surgical’s dive continues on prostate surgery study
Wall Street investors are taking another bite out of Intuitive Surgical (NSDQ:ISRG) today, sending its share price down nearly 8% on a study showing that prostate surgery is un-necessary for many men.
ISRG shares dropped fast on Wall Street yesterday afternoon, fueled by the study and soft prostatectomy procedure volumes.
Prostate cancer: Surgery unnecessary for most early-stage patients | MassDevice.com On Call
MASSDEVICE ON CALL —Appearing in the New England Journal of Medicine, the study concluded that aggressive surgical treatment, the standard approach for prostate cancer treatment in the U.S., may only be necessary for patients with high-risk diseases.
Removal of the gland barely increased the likelihood for survival in patients with low-risk tumors, researchers found, and surgical removal of the prostate "may be neither necessary nor effective" in many cases.
FLASH: Wall Street flees as Intuitive Surgical reports softness in prostatectomies
Intuitive Surgical (NSDQ:ISRG) shares dropped fast on Wall Street today as the robot-assisted surgical devices maker reported softness in its prostatectomy procedures.
Despite 26% growth in sales and 32% growth in profits, ISRG shares lost 5.7% by the end of the company’s conference call, trading after-hours at $513.40 as of about 5:25 p.m.
Accuray nabs imaging systems maker Morphormics for $5.7M
Accuray (NSDQ:ARAY) signed a definitive agreement to acquire medical imaging software systems maker Morphormics for $5.7 million, the company announced today.
Privately held Morphormics, founded by faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, develops software that recognizes and extracts anatomical structures from medical images.
Device makers, hackers come together to protect devices | MassDevice.com On Call
MASSDEVICE ON CALL — Medical device giant and frequent research hacking target Medtronic (NYSE:MDT) joined software expert Jay Radcliffe at a panel discussion in Washington D.C. to discuss security devices.
Radcliffe made headlines last year when he hacked his own insulin pump live on stage at a software security conference in Las Vegas in efforts to highlight vulnerabilities in technologies that patients rely on.
Boston Scientific sells Prolieve device back to Medifocus for $5M
Updated June 28, 2012, at 12:45 p.m. with comments from Medifocus.
Medical device titan Boston Scientific (NYSE:BSX) sold the Prolieve business back to Medifocus (PINK:MDFZF) in a deal valued at $5 million.
Docs resist prostate test recommendation | MassDevice.com On Call
MASSDEVICE ON CALL — Primary care docs surveyed by Johns Hopkins University researchers say they’re unlikely to curtail their use of a test to detect prostate cancer, despite recommendations from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.
The USPSTF stirred up a controversy last year when it suggested that routine prostate-specific antigen tests for healthy men might do more harm than good.
Does a robot-assisted prostatectomy cost more?
Robot-assisted prostate surgery may be a profit-sink for hospitals, according to a new study set to be published in the July issue of the journal Urology.
USPSTF – It’s about time
The numbers are stark. According to the United States Preventive Services Task Force, for every man whose death from prostate cancer is prevented through PSA screening, 40 become impotent or suffer incontinence problems, two have heart attacks and one a blood clot.
Then there’s the psychological harm of a “false positive” test result, which is 80 percent of all “positive” tests. They lead to unnecessary worry, follow-up biopsies, physical discomfort and even harm. Final grade: D.