Medtronic announced today the FDA approval of its new Viva® portfolio of cardiac resynchronization therapy with defibrillation (CRT-D) devices, and the Evera® portfolio of implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICD). According to the press release:
“The Viva CRT-D significantly improves response rate to the therapy for many indicated heart failure patients, with a demonstrated 21 percent reduction in overall heart failure hospitalizations within the first year after implant as compared to historical CRT trials. According to economic analyses presented at ISPOR Europe, with this device both payers and hospital providers will experience reductions in overall healthcare costs as compared to CRT-D devices with traditional programming.
St. Jude Medical today announced CE Mark approval and European launch of its Allure Quadra™ Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy Pacemaker (CRT-P), which brings the quadripolar lead technology to the pacemaker market for the first time. According to the press release:
In 1965, Australian medical device pioneer Noel Gray established Telectronics – Australia’s first manufacturing facility for producing pacemakers that were designed in-house. Telectronics was an innovative developer, achieving some major successes in the early cardiac pacing field, for example, Telectronics’ leads allowed narrowing the pacing pulse to its current nominal of 0.5 milliseconds; encapsulating the pacemaker in titanium instead of epoxy; using a microplasma weld to join the two halves of the pacemaker capsule; creating one of the first rate-responsive ‘demand’ pacemakers; and isolating the pacemaker’s battery in a separate compartment to deal with the problem of leaking mercury-zinc batteries. 
