Growth Opportunities for LVAD in Heart Failure Market

Heart failure (HF) occurs when oxygenated blood is not fully cleared from the lungs, inhibiting blood flow to the rest of the body. Once a patient starts down the path of heart failure, the underlying disease causes the condition to actually accelerate. Moreover, many symptoms associated with HF can be treated, but often the underlying functional impairment of the heart cannot. As a result of blood not being cleared fully, the left ventricle tries to pump additional blood and becomes overworked causing the left ventricle to expand and the heart to become more constricted, further preventing adequate blood flow.

Heart transplantation, currently, is the only curative treatment option which ultimately provides the best recovery of cardiac function. This treatment option has severe limitations, one due to limited availability of donor hearts and secondly, ineligibility of many patients for transplantation due to many factors. Drug treatment and pacing devices also do not halt the progression of the disease. Other devices and cell based therapy are either in the early stages of development or are otherwise not achieving the desired results. Due to these factors, VADs are gaining increasing clinical recognition as a viable long term treatment option.

The population of those suffering from diagnosed congestive heart failure has been increasing while the number of donor hearts available are on a decrease, implying good growth prospects for left ventricular assist devices (LVAD) market. The main application of LVAD is currently for the Bridge-to-Transplant (BTT) market and not so much under the Destination Therapy (DT) market, However, DT application is expected to gain penetration in the near future as efforts are currently on to gain FDA approval for DT application of LVADs for the DT market. Bridge-to-Decision (BTD), which is not a formal indication established by the FDA, would also open new growth avenues for LVADs.

The report provides an overview of the heart failure and its treatments options and LVAD as one of the options. The market size and growth in the LVAD market is explained in details, along with the associated end stage heart failure cost and LVAD reimbursement. The growth drivers and challenges are also discussed. The key players are profiled with their strategies for the market and the competition among the players is also discussed in detail.