Abbott Laboratories had a busy Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) 2019 conference. Among the news it generated was the unveiling of new analyses of the COAPT trial on the cost-effectiveness of Mitraclip vs. guideline-directed medical therapy (GDMT) alone in heart failure patients with secondary mitral regurgitation (MR).

SAN FRANCISCO – Abbott Laboratories expects that its self-expanding transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) system Portico will be able to become a top competitive product. A pivotal trial of Portico has found that the implant is noninferior to current FDA-approved TAVR systems that are marketed in the U.S. The results from the 750-patient, randomized trial were presented here last week at the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) conference.

SAN FRANCISCO – As the transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) field matures, it is becoming increasingly difficult to develop a new implant that can distinguish itself vs. competitors. The incremental benefits are narrowing rapidly, making it tough to distinguish new iterations from one another using standard, randomized trials.

SAN FRANCISCO – Mitraclip from Abbott Park, Ill.-based Abbott Laboratories, has long been the only minimally invasive mitral valve repair device that's approved by the FDA. Edwards Lifesciences Corp., of Irvine, Calif., aims to challenge that dominance with its Pascal. This week at the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) conference, positive one-year data from the small CLASP study on Pascal were presented, offering a further glimpse of data for comparison.

LONDON – The first systematic review and meta-analysis of the accuracy of artificial intelligence in health care has concluded AI may be as good as clinicians in interpreting medical images, but it is hard to be sure because of the poor quality of published studies. Researchers at Birmingham University, U.K. considered 31,887 journal papers appearing between January 2012 and June 2019, of which 20,530 were screened. They found most were methodologically flawed.

Corvia Medical Inc. is enrolling patients in a 100-site multinational study of its Interatrial Shunt Device that will measure traditional heart failure endpoints as well as biosensor data transmitted to the cloud for analysis by Napier, Ill.-based Physiq's artificial intelligence analytics. The trial will evaluate Tewksbury, Mass.-based Corvia's device in heart failure with preserved and mid-range ejection fraction.