Medtronic announces international launch of new stent graft system

Medtronic (NYSE: MDT), the maker of new innovative medical devices, announced Tuesday the European approval and international launch of its new stent graft system.

The Endurant II AAA stent graft system is designed to provide greater options to physicians in repairing abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAA).

An abdominal aorticaneurysm occurswhen the large blood vessel that supplies blood to the abdomen, pelvis and legs becomes abnormally large or bulges forward.The AAA stent market is arapidly growing market in so small part helped along by an aging population. A 2009 report projected that the Endovascular Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Repair Device Market will grow to $1.6 billion by 2015.

Medtronic’s original Endurant II AAA system was developed collaboratively with 250 physicians around the world and allowed the repair of the abdominal aorta using a minimally invasive technique called endovascular aortic repair (EVAR). The new iteration is expected to be approved in the U.S. sometime this year.

It is an improvement upon the first iteration of the graft system, and now allows additional configuration options to physicians.

“Building on the exceptional clinical outcomes of the original system, which has significantly increased the applicability of EVAR, Endurant II offers an even better user experience which will benefit even more patients whose AAAs are detected before rupturing,” said Prof. Hence Verhagen, chief of vascular surgery at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in a Medtronic news release.