Bangalore: St Jude Medical, a global medical device company, announced that the company's EnligHTN renal denervation system provided a safe, effective and sustained reduction in office and ambulatory blood pressure measurements at six months. The new data was released in the Clinical Science and Special Reports Session during the annual American Heart Association (AHA) meeting.

Renal denervation is a minimally invasive approach for the treatment of patients with drug-resistant hypertension. It is a specialized ablation procedure that targets nerves in the renal arteries leading to the kidneys that has been clinically proven to reduce blood pressure. A typical normal blood pressure is below 120 systolic (the first number) and 80 diastolic (the second number) and is expressed as 120/80 mmHg. Hypertension, or high blood pressure, is a blood pressure greater than 140/90 mmHg.The risk of cardiovascular death is cut in half with every 20 mmHg decrease in systolic blood pressure.

Patients enrolled in the EnligHTN I study had an average blood pressure of 176 / 96 mmHg despite being treated with multiple medications to manage this condition. Those treated with the EnligHTN renal denervation system experienced an average rapid systolic blood pressure reduction of 28 mmHg points after 30 days.

At six months, an average systolic blood pressure reduction of 26 mmHg points was maintained; 76 percent of patients responded to the therapy and had an average office blood pressure of 150/86 mmHg and there were no serious acute device- or therapy-specific adverse events reported

"Managing blood pressure is a critical factor in maintaining the overall cardiovascular health of patients with drug-resistant hypertension"said Dr Vasilios Papademetriou, clinical associate-scientific collaborator from First Cardiology Clinic at Hippokration Hospital in Athens, Greece, and a coordinating study investigator who presented the data at the AHA meeting. "These results are important as they show that use of the EnligHTN multi-electrode renal denervation system can rapidly and safely decrease blood pressure, and the reduction is sustainable over time."