The 64th annual American College of Cardiology conference is just wrapping up today in San Diego, California. This year there were 20,000 attendees, including over 13,500 professional attendees, more than 265 exhibitors and key opinion leaders from 128 countries.

The three-day conference highlighted almost a dozen clinical learning pathways on congenital heart disease, critical care cardiology, acute coronary syndrome, vascular medicine and sports cardiology. In addition, many companies announced FDA clearance of their new devices.

On Friday, Boston Scientific announced FDA approval of its WATCHMAN Left Atrial Appendage Closure Device, which it claims is the first alternative to long-term warfarin therapy for stroke risk reduction in patients with non-valvular atrial fibrillation.
The approval came as a result of the WATCHMAN clinical program, which consisted of numerous studies involving 2,400 patients and almost 6,000 patient-years of follow-up. The program proved that the device can be implanted safely, reduces the risk of stroke for eligible patients and can replace warfarin therapy for most of them.

Edwards Lifesciences Corporation released the results of the five-year PARTNER Trial investigating its SAPIEN transcatheter aortic valve on Sunday. It found that SAPIEN has the same outcomes as traditional open-heart surgery.

Toshiba Medical Systems, Inc. announced on Friday that its new Infinix 4D CT received FDA clearance with its Aquilion PRIME CT system configuration. According to a release, this new combination of CT and interventional lab technology gives physicians tools to optimize their time and improve the experience for the patient.

Siemens Healthcare announced that it scored FDA clearance two weeks ago for its new PURE platform for its Artis zee, Artis Q and Artis Q.zen angiography systems. The platform offers the 3D Wizard feature that automatically selects parameters including the amount and injection rate of contrast fluid, X-ray delay to generate a 3-D image, and the syngo 2D/3D Fusion feature that fuses CT, MRI and PET by using just two fluoroscopic images for live image guidance.

Philips Healthcare launched its IntelliSpace Cardiovascular workspace on Sunday, which provides physicians with a holistic view of their patient’s care continuum across the whole cardiovascular service line. It consolidates all of that information so that the whole care team can view it on one workspace.

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