St. Jude Trial Studies Device Effectiveness in Predicting Stroke Risk

St. Jude Medical has released the results of its ASSERT trial, which studied whether an implanted diagnostic device could predict increased risk of stroke. The trial, which enrolled 2,580 patients older than 65 with hypertension and no history of atrial fibrillation, demonstrated that pacemaker patients who have device-detected arrhythmias are 2.5 times more likely to have a stroke than patients who don’t have device-detected arrhythmias, according to the company.