Edwards Lifesciences on April 23 reported that its largest business, transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR), generated Q1 sales of $1.2 billion, an 11% increase over the prior year (NYSE: EW).
CEO Bernard Zovighian is bullish on the best-known product for OC’s most valuable public company, noting on an earnings call that “there has been a shift toward proactive disease management with an increased focus on evaluation and intentional referral of patients” suffering from heart valve disease.
That optimism stands in stark contrast to a recent fear-mongering feature in the Wall Street Journal, which asserted that the company’s “breakthrough heart procedure comes with risky tradeoffs.”
The April 23 story suggested that the artificial valves used by Irvine-based Edwards and competitor Medtronic in TAVR, a far less invasive surgery procedure than open-heart surgery, and one which results in much faster recovery times, “don’t work as well or last as long as they hoped,” particularly for patients under 65.
Edwards officials dispute the story’s claims, telling the Business Journal that it “presents a narrow and misleading portrayal of a highly specialized patient population and does not reflect the full body of scientific evidence.”
Zovighian noted in the Q1 conference call that recent 7- and 10-year follow-up studies “validate the durability and consistent performance” of Edwards’ TAVR products.
The Insider’s questions: why was the WSJ story timed to coincide with Edwards’ earnings, and which company whose products compete with TAVR pitched the story to the publication?
Shares in the $47B-valued company were flat in the week following the Q1 results.
In early 2021, Masimo founder and then-CEO Joe Kiani penned a Leader Board for the Business Journal titled “Pulse Oximeters Are Not Racist” (Nasdaq: MASI).
Kiani’s article hit back at claims made in a late 2020 New England Journal of Medicine article, titled “Racial Bias in Pulse Oximetry Measurement,” that highlighted a report showing challenges facing Black patients using the devices made by Masimo and others that monitor blood oxygen saturation and pulse rates.
Data cited in the report indicated non-white skin tones produced substantially less accurate readings in the devices, which increased the risk of delayed or inaccurate treatment for those patients.
Masimo testing “found a difference between dark and light skinned subjects of 1%, whereas that same test applied in the (study cited in the New England journal) found a 325% difference,” Kiani noted. Masimo would do additional testing to confirm the validity of its findings, he said at the time.
Some of those results are now in, and they back up Kiani’s claims.
Masimo last week reported new study data showing that its pulse oximetry technology accurately monitored hospitalized newborns of all skin tones, following what it called “the largest-ever prospective real-world study of its kind.”
Later this year, Masimo said that it will publish data from another study involving 500 critically ill adult ICU patients of all skin tones.
