Medtronic IN.PACT Admiral DCB Apt for Treating Long Lesions - Analyst Blog

Medtronic plc MDT recently presented new clinical data that validate the clinical effectiveness of its IN.PACT Admiral drug-coated balloon’s (DCB) in treating long lesions in one’s upper leg’s arteries. The data, taken from two different studies and presented at EuroPCR 2015, demonstrate Medtronic’s strong potential in the global peripheral vascular devices market.

Medtronic’s IN.PACT Admiral DCB is designed to reopen narrowed or blocked arteries (including superficial femoral (SFA) and popliteal) in patients who suffer from peripheral artery disease (PAD) in the upper leg– a serious but common cardiovascular disease condition.

Of the two studies, the first was the IN.PACT Global Study’s long lesion imaging cohort which enrolled 157 PAD patients, who exhibited 164 lesions in total, with length of at least 15 cm. Other associated challenging features in the patient group included calcified lesions, occlusions and diabetes.

However, treatment of these patients using the IN.PACT Admiral DCB showed remarkable results. Specifically post 360 days of treatment, 91.1% of the patients exhibited primary patency (opening of artery) while the clinically-driven target lesion revascularization (CD-TLR) rate was only 6%.

Moreover, no major adverse safety events were observed in 94% of the patients and none had to undergo major target limb amputation, through a 12-month follow-up.

The second study in this regard was the DEB SFA-LONG Trial which enrolled 105 patients with an average lesion length of 25.2 cm. Herein, post 360 days of treatment, 89.3% of the patients showed primary patency, while the CD-TLR rate was merely 4%.

Treating long lesions in patients with PAD in lower extremities has always been a major challenge for physicians. Both the studies duly demonstrate the clinical efficacy of Medtronic’s IN.PACT Admiral DCB in treating such lesions, irrespective of the lesion lengths.

It is worth mentioning in this regard that Medtronic received the U.S. FDA clearance for its IN.PACT Admiral DCB for use in the upper leg, in the last reported third quarter of fiscal 2015. Post-approval, management expects this product to drive growth in its peripheral vascular business through the coming quarters.  Accordingly, the company had plans in place to launch IN.PACT Admiral DCB on a broader scale and deploy its Covidien peripheral sales force to start selling the product effective Feb 2015.

Technavio's (a market research company) analysts estimate the global peripheral vascular devices market to grow at a CAGR of 7.29% over the period 2014–19. As a key player in this market, we thus expect Medtronic to increasingly expand its share in this space, going ahead.

Zacks Rank

Currently, Medtronic carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Some better-ranked medical product stocks are Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. BIO, Hospira Inc. HSP and Vascular Solutions Inc. VASC. All the three stocks sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).

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