Results from a major clinical study from Medtronic’s ( MDT - Analyst Report ) Resolute drug-eluting stent (DES), presented at the 61st annual conference of American College of Cardiology, proved the stent to be a strong and persistent option in treating a wide variety of patients with coronary artery disease. Based on this success story, management remains highly confident about Medtronic’s stent business going forward.

The company presented two-year data on DES, which achieved the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval in February 2012 for the treatment of coronary artery disease in patients with diabetes mellitus. This data was derived from RESOLUTE US clinical study and 2 pooled analyses of the entire Resolute clinical program which are RESOLUTE Pooled Safety and RESOLUTE Pooled Diabetes. The data focuses on low rates of target lesion failure (TLF), target lesion revascularization (TLR) and definite/probable stent thrombosis (def/prob ST).

About 1,402 patients across 128 US-based clinical trial sites are registered for RESOLUTE US out of which 1,359 patients had low rates of TLF (7.3%), clinically-driven TLR (4.3%) and def/prob ST (0.2%). Even with 34% of these patients suffering from diabetes mellitus, results were encouraging with TLF (8.9%), clinically-driven TLR (5.7%) and no def/prob ST (0.0%).

The company expects Resolute DES to reflect a positive outcome in patients with or without diabetes mellitus. Given the large number of diabetes patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention annually, the Resolute DES is expected to bolster Medtronic’s CardioVascular business going ahead.

Medtronic has taken several strategic initiatives to maintain its leadership position in the fiercely competitive medical devices industry as it battles to capture market share from other major player such as Boston Scientific ( BSX - Analyst Report ) and St. Jude Medical ( STJ - Analyst Report ) .

Given the huge potential in the DES therapy market, Medtronic has been reallocating resources towards developing new therapies to drive growth. Along with the world’s leading clinicians, researchers and scientists, Medtronic is presently focusing on providing a wide range of improved medical technology for the interventional treatment of cardiovascular diseases and cardiac arrhythmias.

Medtronic is also targeting the under-penetrated emerging economies. Moreover, its restructuring initiatives should help sustain long-term growth. We are currently Neutral on Medtronic which corresponds to a Zacks #3 Rank (Hold).