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Biotech / Medical : Cardiac Science Inc. DFIB (NASDAQ) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sergio H who wrote (111)	11/16/2002 1:43:58 PM
From: Sergio H	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 174

Just noticed another gap just above 1.50. :-( From today's Barrons: <A jolt from Medicare? Medical-device makers have bet big on defibrillator implants. These gadgets jolt patients back to life after their sick hearts go into spasms. Tom Gunderson, a medical equipment analyst at U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray, expects sales of implantable defibrillator units to grow almost 20% annually for the next three years. At Guidant, Medtronic and St. Jude Medical, the analyst expects defibrillators to chip in $1.2 billion, $1.5 billion and $340 million toward 2003 sales, respectively. Medicare foots the bill for many of these $30,000 devices. But the big question is: Will the federal insurance program extend coverage to diagnoses that could double the eligible number of new cases to 600,000 a year? Medicare is due to decide by Nov. 26, and Gunderson admitted some concerns in a Thursday note to clients. Recent medical studies have questioned the benefit of implanting defibrillators in all but the sickest patients. If Medicare were influenced by those studies, the analyst fears coverage might grow by only 90,000 new cases, or even just 45,000. Hopes for an incremental new market of 300,000 patients are based on the estimated number of patients who match those in Guidant's 1,200 patient clinical trial. Those patients were heart-attack survivors, with hearts so weak that only 30% of their pumping chamber emptied with each beat. Initial results of the study indicated that deaths dropped by a third in all defibrillator patients, and by 60% in patients whose heartbeat tended to stall for periods of 120 milliseconds or more. A relatively large group of heart patients has those symptoms. But closer analysis of the Guidant-sponsored trial shows that the big benefit really accrued to a much smaller set of patients -- with hearts that stalled for as long as 150 milliseconds. That group may number less than 90,000 new patients a year, says the Piper Jaffray analyst. If Medicare heeds the newer analysis, it might restrict coverage to the smaller, sicker group of patients. Then Medicare could figure it's saving one life for every three patients who get the $50,000 treatments, instead of just one out of 11 patients if Medicare allowed broader coverage. Despite his concerns, Gunderson wagers that Medicare will spring for the broader defibrillator coverage, which private insurers and 46 state insurance programs already allow. Of the three vendors, he's got Buy ratings on Medtronic and St. Jude, which traded recently at 47 and 32. Gunderson thinks Medtronic could earn $1.65 a share in the April 2004 fiscal year, while St. Jude could earn more than $1.70 a share in calendar 2003.>