Edwards Lifesciences Up 6% After Positive Cardiac Catheter Data

Shares of Edwards Lifesciences

are up more than 6% after the company announced positive results for its cardiac catheter device. "It is encouraging that, in this much larger group of patients treated with transapical valve replacement, investigators observed a trend toward patients feeling better faster and having improved outcomes. We believe this more recent experience adds strong new support to the transapical procedure as an important option for patients who are at high-risk for surgery," said Michael A. Mussallem, Edwards' chairman and CEO. After the randomized enrollment of 104 transapical patients in The PARTNER Trial, another 822 patients were treated transapically during the non-randomized continued access (NRCA) program that enrolled between Sept. 2009 and Sept. 2011. The average predicted risk of operative mortality at 30 days, according to the STS Adult Cardiac Database, was 12.2 percent. During continued access, mortality at 30 days was 8.2 percent and, at one year, it was 23.6 percent. (See tables below for additional details.)