Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions). Our first question comes from the line of Greg Simpson Greg Simpson - Stifel Nicolaus & Company, Inc.
Greg Simpson - Stifel Nicolaus & Company, Inc.
Can you give us maybe some commentary around what we are seeing at centers that have the longest experience with Imeplla in terms of utilization rates? I’m not expecting you to quantify that obviously, but anything anecdotal that maybe you can pass along to us?
Michael R. Minogue
Greg, I can actually repeat some of what I put in the script here which is a long script, but I wanted to give as much detail as I could. We had 108 centers at the end of the quarter, so obviously some of those came in the September month. Of that, 40% of them had already done one or more patient, 20 sites had already supported 2 or more, and there were 8 sites that I had used it in 5 or more patients outside of the trial, and what we see is initially they get comfortable by doing these high-risk patients, and as they get comfortable with that, they start to expand it to these utilization indications, the main one being AMI or heart attack.
Greg Simpson - Stifel Nicolaus & Company, Inc.
Is there anyway maybe to discuss as they do get comfortable, where these high-volume centers kind of gravitate towards? Are you seeing anything that that looks similar among the top centers in terms of usage? I realize it is very open ended. I’m just trying to get a feel for how much they are adopting Impella versus the balloon pump as they obviously get more experience with it.
Michael R. Minogue
All we can tell you is that with one quarter of experience that essentially half of them used it one or more times and some of those got it in the second half of the quarter, so in the summer quarter, that’s usually August which is the slowest period, so the numbers I’m giving you is what we are seeing as far as the utilization within the first quarter.
Greg Simpson - Stifel Nicolaus & Company, Inc.
On gross margin, a very strong quarter especially in light of the changes in the model for consoles that were discussed last quarter and you touched on here. Is that solely the impact of Imeplla or is there anything else at work here and then also how does this change your guidance going forward for gross margins specifically?
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