CardiacAssist, maker of TandemHeart, has appointed Kraig McEwen, as president and CEO of the company, effective from July 5. He will succeed Michael Garippa, who has been CardiacAssist’s president and CEO since 2002.

Prior to joining CardiacAssist, Mr McEwen served as senior vice president at Warrandale, since January 2004. Mr McEwen was responsible for building and growing Medrad’s cardiovascular interventional device business, Medrad Interventional.

Mr McEwen’s management of the Medrad Interventional business included all major operational areas like product development, manufacturing, clinical, regulatory, sales and marketing and resulted in over 20% compound annual growth during his tenure. Prior to Medrad, he was an executive at General Electric Company for four years.

John Marous, chairman of the board of CardiacAssist and former chairman and CEO of Westinghouse Electric Company, said: “The TandemHeart, which provides short-term extracorporeal circulatory support, has provided life-saving therapy to over 2,000 of the sickest cardiac patients at more than 125 of the top cardiac centers in the US.

“Under the leadership of Kraig McEwen and his track record of growth, we look forward to rapidly expanding our growth and market penetration of TandemHeart.”

Mr McEwen said: “I am joining CardiacAssist because I sincerely believe that the TandemHeart can help save the lives of many more thousands of critically ill cardiac patients around the world. The privilege of working with the extremely talented employees of CardiacAssist to further accelerate the tremendous growth that the TandemHeart has been experiencing is a rare and truly exciting opportunity.”