St. Jude snags CE mark for 3-D stent imaging

St. Jude Medical's new technology allows for 3-D imaging of the coronary artery.--Courtesy of St. Jude Medical

St Jude Medical ($STJ) has won European clearance for the Ilumien Optis PCI Optimization System, technology designed to help treat coronary artery disease by modeling vessels and guiding stent placement.

The system integrates optical coherence tomography imaging with fractional flow reserve technology, allowing physicians to take 3-D, panaromic looks at coronary arteries and measure pressure in vessels, all before implanting a stent. With that information, doctors can differentiate plaque build-up in the artery and determine if the narrowed vessels are restricting blood flow, thereby choosing the right interventional method for a particular patient.

St. Jude is the first to offer all of these tools in one platform, the company said, and rolling all the technologies together can both improve patient outcomes and bring down the cost of care, Cardiovascular President Frank Callaghan said.

"This next-generation system delivers critical information to physicians about the location and severity of disease within the coronary arteries, potentially resulting in better medical decision-making and overall cost-effective treatment," Callaghan said in a statement.

According to St. Jude, the EU's healthcare systems spend about $141 billion to treat cardiovascular disease each year, with about a fifth of that money going to coronary artery disease. By uniting its Dragonfly imaging catheter, Aeris blood flow detector and fleet of stents, St. Jude believes it can make the percutaneous coronary intervention process more affordable and efficient.

St. Jude will be touting its all-in-one system at next week's EuroPCR conference in Paris, where devicemakers from around the globe convene to unveil new data and angle for attention from the continent's interventional cardiovascular specialists.

- read the announcement