Sound waves against the hardest blockages: a catheter crosses arteries other tools struggle to reach

Some heart blockages are walled with hardened calcium that ordinary catheters cannot cross. Johnson & Johnson's Shockwave Javelin catheter uses ultrasonic pressure waves to fracture that calcium from inside the artery, preparing it for a stent. In the FORWARD CAD study of 158 patients at 28 sites in the USA and UK, the device reached and crossed its target blockages with a 93.6% technical success rate, and at 30 days 93.4% of patients remained free of major cardiovascular events, with serious imaging-detected complications in 1.3%. The team is candid about the limits: the catheter is still investigational in the USA, and this single-arm study had no comparison group, so it shows the device can work — not yet that it beats existing tools.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: tech innovation