Clinical trial results announced at the Transcatheter Therapeutics conference in San Francisco headlined the medtech research and development news last week. Noteworthy "commercial" developments in late October include iCad’s decision to sell its Xoft brachytherapy business to Elekta and Butterfly Network's plans to work with Forest Neurotech on brain-computer interfaces.

The second half of summer is usually a slow time for news about cardiac technology innovations because there are not many major conferences. But there was still plenty of innovation news coming from both small and big cardiovascular device companies in July and August.

Plus deals involving Glaukos/iVeena, Daré/Hennepin Life Sciences, Prevail/Lacerta, Chugai/Noile-Immune, Horizon/Q32, EpiAxis/Peptilogics and more.

Tremendous progress has been made in the field of ablation therapy for atrial fibrillation (AF) over the past several years, and numerous device-based technologies to address this underserved and rapidly growing patient population are under clinical development. Minimally invasive, percutaneous AF ablation has evolved rapidly as well, although the procedure remains very challenging and limited to highly experienced centers.