AHA 2022 – History repeats for Medtronic

It’s 2014 all over again for Medtronic. Long-awaited data on Symplicity Spyral, its renal denervation system, are a bust. This is a distressing echo of what happened when an earlier iteration, called Symplicity, failed in its US approval trial, forcing the technology into a sort of developmental purgatory from which it only emerged three years later.

Medtronic filed Spyral with the FDA yesterday despite the trial failure, and is extremely bullish on the hypertension device’s commercial potential. But shareholders were plainly disappointed, with the stock down 6% in early trade.