Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator instructions) And our first question will come from the line of Amit Bhalla with Citigroup.
Amit Bhalla – Citigroup
Hi. Thanks for taking the question. The first one in regard to the disposables business, can you give us a little bit more granularity on the pricing and unit changes for disposables within atherectomy and lead management, and also a little bit more detail about the impact from competition, any sort of color you can give us on how its impacting your accounts and your penetration?
John Schulte
Sure, Amit. The first question is simple. It's all unit growth. We've had no price changes whatsoever on either side of the business. The second piece, I'll handle the VI piece and have Will talk about the lead management piece. Obviously, we think that in the atherectomy market there's increased competition. We have one new competitor, which have been on the market for about nine months and a new one that's just received approval. As we stated previously, physicians who use atherectomy are tinkerers, I'll call them. They like to try to get a flavor for each technology to determine where it fits within their practice, particularly, the busier interventionalists and so, we always have expected trialing in these accounts and that, in fact, does occur and has with CSI. It certainly did with Fox Hollow. I think ultimately what will result is kind of how their satisfaction level is achieved with each of these technologies as they look for it in specific niches.
And so for rotational atherectomy, I think it has some benefits in smaller knee, particularly focal calcified lesions. I think Fox Hollow has some advantages in the larger arteries like the SFA and focal centric lesions because I think it can be done fairly quickly. I think Pathway Medical, which we haven't seen in the U.S. yet but we expect probably late this quarter or certainly fourth quarter, I think will have some advantages primarily in the (inaudible) area because of its lumen size that it can create. We track these hospitals very carefully when we understand a new account has taken on a new product. We measure our business and the like and we always do see a slight dip in those accounts as they trial these new products, but then we measure the business coming back and historically, we've seen and we continue to see a rebound in those businesses and it usually takes about six to nine months in our judgment to have this all shake out. And so, the impact that we're seeing from competitive devices is really no different than what we expected at this piece and we do see a rebound in our business in these busier accounts. So we remain convinced that the laser provides significant advantages in terms of treating large and small diameter arteries, has the widest breadth of tissue types that it can treat from soft thrombus to moderate calcium and we think it has the strongest in safety profiles.
- To read the full transcript on Seeking Alpha, click here »
