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Medtronic offers rapid exchange system

SANTA ROSA, Oct. 31, 2008 – Medtronic Cardiovascular in Santa Rosa will be able to use Abbott Labs’ rapid delivery system, it was announced yesterday. An injunction against using it, in place since 2000, was lifted Wednesday.

About three-quarters of U.S. interventional cardiologists prefer the rapid-exchange delivery system, which employs a shorter wire and can be manipulated by one, rather than two, physicians.

Medtronic will be using the system with its Endeavor drug eluting stents, the Driver and Microdriver bare-metal stents and the NC Sprinter balloon catheter systems.

Medtronic has been using the rapid exchange system outside the U.S., where the injunction did not apply.

“It’s important for Medtronic to be able to use this in the U.S. because it puts us on a par with Abbott, Johnson & Johnson and Boston Scientific in a $1.8 billion market,” said Medtronic spokesman Joe McGrath.

Medtronic Cardiovascular, headquartered in Santa Rosa, won’t be adding staff as a result of the injunction being lifted, he said, since most manufacturing now takes place in Ireland.

“But it opens new opportunities for our products to be used in high-volume clinics, where the majority of interventional procedures take place, rather than in teaching hospitals, where the more traditional, over-the-wire procedures are used,” he said.