Medtronic, Inc. Melody® Transcatheter Pulmonary Valve Receives Prestigious Prix Galien Award
“We are extremely honored to receive this recognition by the esteemed Galien Foundation, and we accept this award on behalf of congenital heart patients around the world who have been helped by our Melody valve,” said John Liddicoat, M.D., senior vice president, Medtronic, and president of the Medtronic Structural Heart Business. “We are committed to providing treatment options for these patients – many of whom are young children who have undergone multiple open-heart surgeries over their lifetimes – as this work fully exemplifies Medtronic’s mission to alleviate pain, restore health and extend life.”
Approximately eight in 1,000 babies are born with congenital heart disease (CHD). Prior to the Melody valve, CHD patients with right ventricular outflow tract anomalies had no option other than another open heart surgery for treatment of pulmonary regurgitation or stenosis. As there is no surgical cure for these pulmonary valve deformities, patients are committed to a lifetime of surgical and catheter interventions, and will often undergo several of these procedures before they reach 18 years of age. The Medtronic Melody therapy is less invasive than surgery and delays the patient’s next open-heart surgery by restoring pulmonary valve function.
The Melody valve was the world’s first transcatheter valve implanted in a human in 2000, the first transcatheter valve commercially available anywhere in the world upon gaining CE Mark in 2006, and the first transcatheter valve ever approved in the United States in 2010 when it received approval through FDA’s Humanitarian Device Exemption program for products that treat small, underserved patient populations.
In collaboration with leading clinicians, researchers and scientists worldwide, Medtronic offers the broadest range of innovative medical technology for the interventional and surgical treatment of cardiovascular disease and cardiac arrhythmias.
About the Galien Foundation and the Prix Galien Awards
The mission of the Galien Foundation is to serve as a vehicle for the open exchange of ideas that drive science and new innovations. The Prix Galien Awards were created to honor medical research and pharmacology for outstanding efforts to improve the human condition through approval of innovative treatments and medicines. The winners are selected by a preeminent scientific and learned committee that included several Nobel Laureates.
About Medtronic
Medtronic, Inc. (www.medtronic.com), headquartered in Minneapolis, is the global leader in medical technology – alleviating pain, restoring health, and extending life for millions of people around the world.
Any forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties such as those described in Medtronic’s periodic reports on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Actual results may differ materially from anticipated results.