Medtronic closes CathWorks

Medtronic said April 20 it completed its acquisition of CathWorks, bringing the heart-imaging company’s FFRangio system into its cardiovascular business. (news.medtronic.com) The deal is valued at $585 million, with possible additional earn-out payments that Medtronic did not disclose. CathWorks had already been working with Medtronic under a 2022 strategic partnership and co-promotion agreement. (news.medtronic.com) CathWorks makes software for coronary artery disease, the buildup of plaque that narrows blood vessels feeding the heart. Its FFRangio system analyzes routine coronary angiograms, or X-ray images taken during a catheter procedure, to estimate how much those narrowings are blocking blood flow. (cath.works) The pitch is that doctors can get that readout without threading a pressure wire through the artery and without using drug-induced hyperemia, the stress-like state used in standard fractional flow reserve testing. Medtronic said FFRangio gives a physiological assessment of the full coronary tree from routine angiograms. (news.medtronic.com) That matters in a cath lab because the decision is not just where an artery looks narrow, but whether the narrowing is actually starving heart muscle of blood. CathWorks says its system is designed to turn an image-based procedure into a blood-flow measurement without adding the wire-based steps many labs use now. (cath.works) Medtronic tied the closing to new clinical data presented at the American College of Cardiology’s 2026 meeting. The company said CathWorks’ ALL-RISE randomized trial enrolled more than 1,900 patients at 59 sites across North America, Asia, Europe and the Middle East and found FFRangio was non-inferior to wire-based physiology on one-year major adverse cardiac events. (news.medtronic.com) Medtronic is also using the deal to add another product to a cardiovascular portfolio that already includes coronary balloons, catheters, stents and guidewires. Jason Weidman, who leads Medtronic’s Coronary & Renal Denervation business, said the CathWorks system will add “data-driven insights” for diagnosing and treating coronary artery disease. (medtronic.com) (news.medtronic.com) The purchase also fits a broader Medtronic acquisition push in 2026. MedTech Dive reported this week that CathWorks is Medtronic’s second tuck-in acquisition to close this year, after the company told investors it planned to step up dealmaking in core businesses including cardiovascular and neuroscience. (medtechdive.com 1) (medtechdive.com 2) For CathWorks, the closing turns a four-year commercial relationship into a full sale. For Medtronic, it adds a test meant to help cardiologists decide, during the same procedure, which blockages need treatment and which do not. (news.medtronic.com)