The Bridge Across Forever: Devices for CHF
This article was originally published in Start Up
Executive Summary
A new generation of miniature, totally implantable devices for end-stage congestive heart failure promises to return patients to normal lives. If the implantable ventricular assist devices can function reliably for many years, they may offer patients an alternative to heart transplantation and even arrest the progression of the diseases at earlier stages.
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Interventional Heart Failure
Medical device investors who have avoided heart failure, because of the long and uncertain development course of ventricular assist devices, should take another look. The minimally invasive revolution in heart failure, to some extent a logical extension of interventional cardiology's migration into other areas of structural heart disease like heart valves and PFOs, is providing new device opportunities, which have the potential to get to market sooner and at the same address an even larger patient population than heart failure devices that came before.