TAVR market shows hopeful signs of resiliency, says GlobalData

“Following Edwards Lifesciences’ announcement of an expected 5% growth for its transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) business, GlobalData observes hopeful signs of resiliency in the TAVR market.

James Spencer, Data Scientist at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, offers his view on the current approach to reopening America’s economy:

COVID has tanked the global economy, and medtech was not spared. Specifically, the cardiovascular space saw a drop of 50% in monthly revenue from its January 2020 norms. TAVR was just as affected as any of the other cardio markets. However, Edwards Lifesciences, one of the strongest companies in the TAVR space, is confident that TAVR will bounce back and even continue to grow during this year.

While this claim may sound absurd on the surface, the TAVR space may be uniquely equipped to do this for several reasons. Firstly, and mainly, TAVR is a life-saving procedure. While other procedures such as cosmetic surgery or joint replacement surgeries can be pushed back due to a risk of infection, pushing back a TAVR procedure has a higher risk than the virus alone. TAVR is generally conducted on older patients who have severe heart issues. If such a condition were left untreated, it could lead to sudden death or permanent injury from heart attacks or strokes. Due to this, TAVR cannot be put off like other surgeries, and was still performed in relatively large numbers during the peak of the pandemic.

Furthermore, TAVR has recently been given an expansion to its indications. Previously, it was only approved for high-risk, non-operable patients, but has been expanded to be approved for patients at moderate risk now. Due to this, it is available to a much wider patient population. Encouraging surgical outcomes studies mean that TAVR is actually becoming the preferred procedure over the original surgical aortic valve replacement (SAVR) procedure. This slow takeover of the SAVR space is another factor that may have buoyed the growth of TAVR and allowed it to weather the storm better than its other counterparts.”