In a recent interview with Spencer Nam of Summer Street Research Partners we discussed the newest Cardiovascular devices to hit the market. He considered Thoratec’s Heartmate II the front runner for late-stage heart failure;

Mr. Nam: In the LVAD space targeting the late-stage heart failure patients, there are several products, but the frontrunner is Thoratec’s (THOR) Heartmate II (HM II) LVAD. They just received an FDA pre-market approval (PMA) for use of HM II among patients waiting for heart transplant. We call that bridge-to-transplant indication, literally implying bridging the gap between the time when a patient becomes a candidate for a heart transplant and when the patient receives the heart transplant.

The space for LVADs or LVAD-like products seems to be a very active space with five to six other companies conducting trials

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 14th, 2009 at 9:46 am and is filed under Healthcare Stocks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.