CircuLite: Partial Support Enables Patient Management

Article preview from Start-Up - February 2009

Historically, the market for heart failure devices has gone to extremes. At one end of the spectrum, there are drugs, which manage the symptoms of patients in earlier stages of the disease, and at the other end, there are surgically implanted left ventricular assist devices (LVADs) and artificial hearts, to support patients in end-stage heart failure while they wait for a heart transplant. There is a large group of chronic heart failure patients in the middle—more than two million of them worldwide—who are resistant to or have failed drugs or devices, and are therefore bereft of helpful therapeutic options. Back in 2006, when START-UP first spoke with CircuLite Inc., CEO Paul Southworth explained that his company was after those patients, with a small pump that, in providing partial circulatory support, would be in an entirely different category than LVADs.