At TCT, A New Vision of the Device Industry

01 Oct 2003

The biggest news at this year's TCT meeting was, as anticipated, Boston Scientific's release of its latest TAXUS drug-eluting stent trial results, which showed slightly better binary restenosis rates than Johnson & Johnson's SIRIUS trial. The TAXUS results appeared to trigger a 4.5% drop in J&J's share price, surprising given that the TAXUS results weren't a dramatic improvement, but indicative of how much the companies involved with DES have at stake.

As we've reported from other recent interventional cardiology conferences, the big news at this year's Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) conference, held in Washington in September, was all about drug-eluting stents (DES), though as much for their practical application as their clinical success. During the first three days, interventional cardiologists and device company executives packed rooms where presenters promised insights into real-world experience with stents, followed the last two days by a DES Summit. All told, the data on cost analyses easily rivaled clinical trials' figures on technical efficacy as attention-grabbing indicators of potential impact on adoption rates.

The biggest news at this year's meeting was, as anticipated, Boston Scientific Corp. 's release on the first day...