Pooled data shows benefits of Viva CRT devices in Heart Failure-Medtronic

Medtronic has announced new data supporting the clinical and economic value of its cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) devices: Viva XT and Viva Quad XT CRT-defibrillators, and Viva CRT-pacemakers, for the treatment of Heart Failure, including a significant reduction in all-cause 30-day readmissions after Heart Failure hospitalizations. Additionally, heart failure patients who benefited early from CRT lived longer and consumed fewer hospital resources than patients who did not experience early benefit from the therapy.

Pooled data from five trials (CARE-HF, MIRACLE, MIRACLE-ICD, RAFT and REVERSE) involving 3,872 patients determined whether CRT reduces the rate of all-cause readmission within 30 days of a Heart Failure hospitalization. Among the 678 subjects with an index heart failure hospitalization, there was a 26 percent relative reduction of hospital readmissions in patients treated with CRT. For patients with more advanced heart failure, Class III/IV, the benefit was higher, at 31 percent, than Class II patients at 10 percent. Research also showed that patients who improved or remained unchanged six months after CRT were projected to live longer and consumed fewer hospital resources (i.e. fewer and/or shorter heart failure-related hospitalizations), than patients who worsened.

An additional analysis of five trials (MIRACLE, MIRACLE-ICD, InSync III Marquis, PROSPECT and Adaptive CRT) found that patients who improved or remained unchanged at six months of receiving CRT were projected (using Markov modeling) to live approximately eight years compared to less than two years in the worsened group. These new data were featured in separate presentations at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2014.