J&J's exit from the coronary angioplasty market was a sign of the end of an era. Without a product at the high end of innovation, it was left with a basic product that in the interim had become commoditized.

A percutaneous intravascular cardioverter-defibrillator matched a conventional ICD in a randomized comparison of defibrillation thresholds. The authors of the study believe the PICD could reduce many of the complications associated with conventional defibrillators.

A decade ago, incuabators were seen as the best medicine for what then ailed the medical device industry, most notably a complex regulatory pathway and a difficult venture financing climate. Perhaps not surprisingly, as both the regulatory path and venture financing grew easier in the mid 2000s, incubators began to struggle, victims of their own financing problems. More recently, two huge acquisitions, Abbott's purchase of Evalve and Medtronic's of Ardian, suggest that at least one incubator, The Foundry, is proving that incubation works.

Every year for just about the past decade, drug-eluting stents dominated the agenda at the Paris Course on Revascularization and just about any meeting where interventional cardiologists gathered to hear the latest in technology and practice innovation. But without question, the star of this year’s PCR was percutaneous heart valves and, in particular the revolution in transaortic valve replacement that has been ushered in by Edwards Lifesciences., which acquired Percutaneous Valve Technologies several years ago, and Medtronic., as a result of its more recent CoreValve acquisition.