After demonstrating last year that its miniaturized heart pumps could improve survival shortly after a serious heart attack, Johnson & Johnson MedTech has now shown that the benefits from its Impella CP can extend out to a decade—with treated patients gaining an additional 600 days of life, on average.
The long-term data tracking people who suffered an ST-elevated myocardial infarction—also known as a STEMI or widowmaker heart attack and caused by a blocked coronary artery—confirmed that the gains can increase year over year.
After 10 years of follow-up, the randomized DanGer Shock trial logged a reduction in absolute mortality of 16.3%, including patients who also entered cardiogenic shock. That outpaces the survival benefits seen in a six-month analysis presented early last year, which posted a mortality reduction of 12.7%.
The study had enrolled 360 participants in Denmark, Germany and the U.K. between 2013 and 2023. The latest findings were presented this weekend at the annual congress of the European Society of Cardiology, being held in Madrid, and were published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
J&J estimates that about 750,000 people in the U.S. have a STEMI heart attack each year, with up to 10% experiencing cardiogenic shock, which ranks as a leading cause of death while patients are being treated in the hospital. That group of patients typically sees mortality rates nearing 50% within 24 hours.
The company’s catheter-based Impella pumps—acquired in 2022 through its $16.6 billion purchase of Abiomed—are threaded into the chambers of the heart via a minimally invasive procedure, which then aid in pushing blood out to the body to take the workload off the ailing cardiac muscle.
Late last year, J&J presented sub-analyses from the DanGer Shock study that showed Impella’s pumping action could help the body clear lactic acid from the bloodstream—which builds up during cardiogenic shock as the body redirects oxygen toward the brain and vital organs in a bid to survive.