Penumbra Inc.’s 'resoundingly positive' results from its STORM-PE trial could see current guidelines for anticoagulant use in pulmonary embolism swept away in favor of mechanical thrombectomy. A deluge of favorable comments by experts and analysts followed the presentation during a late-breaking session at Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics, the annual scientific symposium of the Cardiovascular Research Foundation, which showed more than 50% improvement in treatment effect from Penumbra’s computer-assisted vacuum thrombectomy system plus anticoagulation compared to anticoagulation alone within two days with no increase in major adverse events.

Doctors and device makers are habituated to the notion that more devices equal better outcomes, but one presenter at this year’s Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics meeting in San Francisco argued that this is not always the case. James McCabe of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston said cardiologists may want to start thinking about whether a cardiology implant should stay implanted, a mindset that is anything but intuitively attractive to the modern practicing physician.

In San Francisco, the first day of Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics 2025 annual meeting offered presentations on the future of the convergence of devices, drugs and AI. The takeaway from the session seems to be that while the future is bright, it will become the present only when payers can find an economic argument to pay for the advances formed by this convergence.

Trials are being conducted at three pediatric emergency departments in England of the Memed BV rapid blood test, designed to help health care providers distinguish between bacterial and viral infections. The test developed by Memed Diagnostics Ltd. can deliver results in as little as 15 minutes, speeding up the diagnosis of serious conditions such as sepsis or meningitis in children.