Robert Ford: Sure. Like I said in my opening comments, we completed the trial. There’s a six month follow-up, Larry. That means that, we will be on target here to file for CE mark by the end of this year. Then, it’s just going to depend on that process. I think that’s probably our anchor point here is getting the filing in before the end of the year. Yes, I mean, I’m not surprised by our EP growth. I know many on the call might be, but I’m not surprised. First of all, it’s an important therapy. It’s an underpenetrated disease. We know there’s plenty of growth in this segment, and as a result of that, it’s highly competitive. But we haven’t been surprised by the growth. If you look at PFA, it’s been in Europe for three years.
If you average our growth rate over those last three years in Europe, we’ve been growing mid-teens, and the growth, it remains broad base. It was broad based in Europe, again, this quarter where we saw double-digit growth in ablation catheters. Not just on the mapping side, on the ablation catheter side also but then also great growth on the mapping side, and this technology has now come to the U.S. I think we probably had maybe two months of seeing the technology be rolled out here in the U.S. I think the competitors have been very aggressive here in terms of bringing the technology to the accounts in the U.S., and I can say, we’ve mapped a lot of those cases, Larry. I’m not going to say we’ve been in every single case, but I’d say, a vast majority of the cases we’ve been in there.
And there are some similarities to Europe, but there are some differences to Europe. I think one of the things that we saw in Europe was that there was this inclination to use the technology starting off as kind of a one shot. So that had an impact more on the CRYO business than I would say on the RF side. And that’s what we saw in our mapping cases. We saw here, at least in the first couple of months, that’s where a large portion of those cases occurred, at least the ones that we mapped were in places where they were traditionally used in CRYO. I think the difference that we saw a little bit in Europe is that at least 90% of the cases that we were part of direct or indirectly were using mapping that that number was lower in Europe. So that’s probably a little bit of the difference I saw here in the U.S., and that bodes well for us.
Our end site system, our mapping system, our mapping catheters are widely viewed as an excellent option here for mapping these PFA cases. We have a large install base. Customers are familiar with it. Don’t need a make room, don’t need a fight for capital. We’ve got best in class clinical support. And the architecture here is open, as I’ve said in previous calls. So it integrates well with these PFA catheters. We actually recently released a software upgrade last month that provides even better visualization to these catheters and potential for faster procedures and less floor time. I think this is a perfect combination, quite frankly, in a time where there’s going to be market transition, There’s a lot of new products, there’s a lot of choices.
And when you have a situation like that, I think flexibility is key, and that’s what we heard from our customers. One data point that I thought was also interesting to your question of what helped drive that in the cases that we were part of, and we saw, we also observed that an RF catheter was pulled in about a quarter of the cases that we saw. So on top of the PFA catheter, an RF catheter was pulled to do touchups, et cetera. I’d say right now, everything that we’ve seen in Europe on the positive side is happening. And then I think there’s some interesting dynamics here in the U.S. that could be favorable for us also, but it’s still very early. If I look at March, we had probably one of our most, we look at cases per day. That was probably one of our highest months.
So far so good. And we’re excited about the technology, we’re excited about our program. We released data on our program and some recent medical meetings that occurred. And the feedback, from those that have been used in our product are very positive. And the integration with EnSite in including like the tissue contact force algorithm and the visualization, all of that is seen as a real promise and a differentiator versus what’s being used today.
Operator: Our next question will come from Josh Jennings from Cowen.
Josh Jennings : Great to see the strong start here, the Q1 results. Robert, I was hoping to just ask first on Libre and just internationally, any other payment or coverage decisions that we should have on our radar in various countries. Sounds like you have made sense, some nice progress already in Germany, and then in the U.S. I was hoping you could just help or share your thoughts on the share gain opportunity in integrated pump segment of CGM market versus the share loss risk in the Type 2 non-insulin cash pace segment with a competitive launch share early in 2024. I just have one follow up.
Robert Ford : On your international question, I mean, it’s always difficult to forecast exactly by month a quarter coverage kind of payment decisions. I can tell you though that the team has a full global map of all the work that’s being done regarding clinical information and negotiations, et cetera. It’s difficult to kind of forecast it, but what I have said is on previous calls and on some of my prepared remarks that I think you’re going to see this just this build that will be occurring globally in the market as the data proves and shows the clinical medical and health economic benefit by reimbursing for this patient population. And I think we’re well positioned there. Internationally, I think we got some pretty large markets already.
