Cadent Medical Corp.

Most people who survive heart attacks (50,000 in the US annually) continue to be to be at risk of suffering another cardiac arrest. For some, this risk subsides as time goes on, others are candidates for permanent implantation of cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs), devices which deliver high-energy charges to the heart to restore normal cardiac function as need. Most patients who've recently suffered cardiac arrests, as well as people who have experienced tachyarrhythmias or congestive heart failure (a group which numbers 160,000 in the US), would benefit from the continuous protection of a defibrillator. But because of their high cost—approximately $18,000 for the device plus as much as $40,000 more for the surgery—only a small sub-set of this population are triaged into ICDs.