Edwards heart valve beats Medtronic device in study

• Edwards Lifesciences' (NYSE:EW) Sapien XT heart valve, which can be inserted without open-heart surgery, outperformed a rival device from Medtronic (NYSE:MDT) in a head-to-head comparison of 241 patients.
• Sapien XT led to improved symptoms in patients, less leakage, was easier to insert and had a similar death rate to Medtronic's CoreValve, which, in a separate study, was shown to have better mortality figures than open-heart procedures.
• While a previous version of the Sapien has generated disappointing sales, analysts believe that the market for the devices could eventually be worth $3B a year.