First Patients Implanted with ICDs in BIOTRONIK ProMRI Study

LAKE OSWEGO, Oregon, US, April 3, 2014—BIOTRONIK, a leading manufacturer of cardiovascular medical technology, announced today that the first patients across the United States have received implants of the new Iforia implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs).

Implants occurred soon after BIOTRONIK received Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for the new phase of its ongoing ProMRI® trial. Phase C will investigate the safety of ICDs in the MRI environment. The first US clinical study of its kind, it is a major step towards making ProMRI technology available in the US.

Every year, nearly 200,000 people in the US are implanted with ICDs.¹ Recent studies estimate 50 to 75 percent of these patients will develop a clinical need for an MRI scan over the course of their lifetime.²

Medical centers participating in the ProMRI trial expressed immediate demand for the new ICD series. Iforia is BIOTRONIK’s latest generation of ICDs, offering uncompromised longevity and daily monitoring through BIOTRONIK Home Monitoring^®. From the West, an Iforia system was implanted in Rancho Mirage, California, by Leon A. Feldman, MD, electrophysiologist at Desert Cardiology. Farthest East in the US, a patient was implanted with an Iforia system by Mark Marieb, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine (Cardiology), Associate Clinical Professor of Nursing, and the Clinical Director of Electrophysiology at Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut. Additional implants occurred in Langhorne, Pennsylvania; Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Ann Arbor, Michigan; Richmond, Virginia; New York, New York; and Salem, Oregon.

“This is an important expansion of diagnostic capabilities for my patients,” said Leon A. Feldman, MD, Desert Cardiology, California. “MRIs offer some of the best diagnostic information for a variety of conditions, and patients with ICDs have been unable to get them. This clinical trial will verify the safety of this ICD device family and allow us to provide state-of-the-art treatment for all of our cardiology patients.”

The expansion phase of the ProMRI clinical study to include ICDs will recruit and evaluate 172 patients at 35 US investigational centers. This phase of the ProMRI study is specifically designed to confirm the safety and efficacy of BIOTRONIK’s Iforia devices and Setrox and Linoxsmart leads during MRI scans with an exclusion zone. All of the devices in the study are currently commercially available, but await FDA approval for use during MRIs. The BIOTRONIK-sponsored trial (NCT01761162) has been in US subject recruitment since March 2013.

“Initial demand for participation in Phase C of the study has been robust, and we are off to a great start,” said Kevin Mitchell, Vice President, Clinical Studies at BIOTRONIK, Inc. “We are working closely with each of the sites to conduct the trial efficiently and effectively. Cardiac device patients and physicians express a clear need to access MRI scans. We expect this trial to take us one step closer to making that a reality.”

1. ^{Morgan Stanley, ICD Market, 1996-2009.}
2. ^{Roguin et al., Europace (2008): 10, 336-346.}