St. Jude Medical, Inc., a global medical device company, today announced a new data analysis from the CHAMPION trial showing that heart failure (HF) patients with reduced ejection fraction on optimal doses of guideline directed medical therapy (GDMT) managed by pulmonary artery (PA) pressure monitoring with the CardioMEMS™ HF System had a 57 percent reduction in mortality and a 43 percent reduction in HF hospitalizations compared with patients on GDMT managed by the standard of care (SOC). These data show a strong improvement for patients managed by optimal GDMT and the CardioMEMS HF System in both mortality and hospitalizations over currently defined best practices.

Medtronic plc today announced initial clinical outcomes for its next-generation CoreValve Evolut R System. At 30-days, the new recapturable, self-expanding valve showed no incidents of all-cause mortality or stroke in a high and extreme risk patient population.  Data from the Evolut R Study, which enrolled 60 patients from six centers in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, were unveiled today at the 64th Annual Scientific Session of the American College of Cardiology (ACC.15). The CoreValve Evolut R System is not approved for commercial use in the United States where it is currently undergoing clinical trials.

Edwards Lifesciences Corporation, the global leader in the science of heart valves and hemodynamic monitoring, today announced that 30-day outcomes for high- and intermediate-risk patients treated with the SAPIEN 3 transcatheter aortic valve demonstrated the lowest all-cause mortality rates of any of the PARTNER studies, as well as excellent clinical outcomes on the other components of the primary endpoint measures of stroke and paravalvular regurgitation.  This first report of SAPIEN 3 data in the United States, and first report on intermediate risk transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) patients, was presented as part of the late-breaking clinical trials at the American College of Cardiology's (ACC) 64th Annual Scientific Session in San Diego.

TOTAL may not totally spell the end of routine manual thrombectomy with PCI, but it should make interventional cardiologists think twice about using it with STEMI patients. The large, international trial showed no clinical benefit and possible harm.

Full results from a Phase 3 study examining Portola Pharmaceutical's developmental compound andexanet alfa found it rapidly and significantly reversed the blood thinning (anticoagulant) effects of XARELTO (rivaroxaban). These results, from the first part of the ANNEXA-R (Andexanet Alfa a Novel Antidote to the Anticoagulant Effects of fXa Inhibitors – Rivaroxaban) study, will be presented at the 64th Annual Scientific Session of the American College of Cardiology (ACC) on March 16, 2015. Additional findings to be presented at the meeting include new 24-month results from an ongoing, five-year, observational study of people with non-valvular atrial fibrillation taking XARELTO, which showed the rates and patterns of major bleeding in routine clinical practice were generally consistent with those observed in Phase 3 clinical trials used to approve the medicine for this indication.

Stealth BioTherapeutics (Stealth), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing drug candidates for the treatment of diseases involving mitochondrial dysfunction, today announced its EMBRACE results. EMBRACE is a Phase 2 multinational clinical study evaluating Bendavia in patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS). The results were presented at the American College of Cardiology 64th Annual Scientific Session in San Diego, California, during the Late-Breaking Clinical Trials (LBCT) session, Main Tent, from 8:00 AM to 9:15 AM PT.

About three years ago, Betty Vaughn of Golden Valley, Minn., started to feel light-headed, fatigued and out of breath when she walked up and down the stairs. After visiting her doctor, the 89-year-old was diagnosed with degenerative mitral regurgitation (DMR), a heart condition in which the leaflets of the mitral valve do not close completely, causing blood to flow backward and leak into the left atrium of the heart.  After her diagnosis, Paul Sorajja, M.D., cardiologist at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, performed a transcatheter mitral valve repair (TMVR) procedure on Vaughn, who was not a good candidate for surgery, using Abbott's (NYSE: ABT) MitraClip in October 2014. Now, just months after the procedure, Vaughn has resumed many of the activities she loves, like working in the yard and playing cards with friends.

NeoStem, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company developing novel cell based personalized medicine therapies, announced today the presentation of updated efficacy and safety results from the one-year follow-up for its Phase 2 PreSERVE study and additional analyses of certain functional tests at ACC.15, the American College of Cardiology’s 64th Annual Scientific Session and Expo, in San Diego, California. The one-year follow-up results are defined as all data accumulated until the last patient enrolled completed 12 month follow-up.  Thus, the results actually represent data from patients with a median follow-up of 18 months.