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Abiomed Announces An Upgrade Of Their Current LVAD

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Abiomed‘s Impella left ventricular assist device, an endovascular percutaneously-delivered LVAD, will soon be getting a more powerful new model. The current model is capable of delivering an augmentation of cardiac output by up to 2.5 liters a minute, but the new Impella cVAD should do around 3.5 L/m, and possibly up to 4 L/m in the not too distant future.

The new device, and above numbers, were announced at Abiomed’s investor day conference and the company hopes to have the device available to clinicians by the Summer of 2012.

Here are the bullet points about Impella cVAD that were provided to us by Abiomed: Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*

Research Looks At Effectiveness Of World’s Smallest Heart Pump

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Cost scrutiny and comparative effectiveness research are playing a growing role in shaping healthcare delivery. In light of that, Abiomed Inc. (Danvers, MA) has recently announced the results of a study that showed the company’s Impella heart pump significantly reduced major adverse events at an incremental cost per quality-adjusted life year. “The cost-effective message is directly tied to the financial impact of these better clinical outcomes for patients treated with Impella,” Jeffrey Popma, MD, the director of the angiographic Core Laboratory at Beth Israel Deaconess told Medgadget. Popma was responsible for the planned analysis of the angiographic results.

The device, which the company describes as the “world’s smallest heart pump,” demonstrated an increase in ejection fraction of more than 20% and an improvement in Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*

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