A Canadian surgeon has become the first in North America to implant the world's first drug-eluting bioresorbable vascular scaffold. Jean-Fran ois Tanguay, MD, director of the coronary unit at the Montreal Heart Institute, implanted Abbott Vascular's (Abbott Park, Illinois) Absorb stent in a 67-year old woman with coronary artery disease in December. Three months later, she is living normally, free of chest pain. Tanguay told Medical Device Daily the device could "completely replace" the current generation of metal coronary stents.

Damon Canfield is a principal in NPI, a Powell, Ohio-based consultancy that specializes in helping U.S. medical-products firms launch into the Chinese market or establish manufacturing there. NPI has technical offices in Shanghai and Guangzhou, China, as well as Hong Kong.