In Atrial Fibrillation, SentreHEART Lassos An Advantage

Interventional cardiology, in offering minimally invasive procedures to replace open cardiac surgeries, has made life much better for patients with coronary and structural heart disease. But in many cases, surgery still has an important long-term advantage over interventional approaches: the ability to accomplish a repair without leaving an implant, like a stent or an occlusion device, behind. Cardiovascular device companies are headed in that direction. In coronary and peripheral vascular disease, investors are looking to bioresorbable scaffolds, which stent a vessel open during a critical window of healing then disappear, to provide growth in a market that has lost its momentum. (SeeAlso see "Vascular Interventional Devices: New Avenues For Growth" - In Vivo, 31 March, 2014..) In structural heart disease, start-up SentreHEART Inc. aims to offer the same long-term advantage: minimally invasive left atrial appendage (LAA) closure without an implant.

The percutaneous exclusion or closure of the LAA, a windsock-shaped appendage that extends off of the left atrium of the heart, is one of the hottest new markets in interventional...