Medtronic just reported $9.8 billion in quarterly revenue, and the number that explains it is not on the income statement. It is inside the chests of tens of millions of people with an irregular heartbeat.

The medical device giant grew overall revenue by 13.7% compared to the same quarter last year, a pace that surprised enough people that the company immediately raised its expectations for the full fiscal year. Medtronic now projects annual revenue growth of roughly 7.5%, up from its previous forecast of around 7%.

The engine behind that upgrade is a technology called pulsed-field ablation, used to treat atrial fibrillation. AFib, as it is commonly known, is a condition where the heart beats erratically. Left unmanaged, it raises the risk of stroke and heart failure significantly. More than 37 million people worldwide live with it today, and that number is projected to more than double by 2050. That is not a niche market. That is a generational public health problem looking for a solution.

Pulsed-field ablation works by using precise electrical pulses to destroy the small clusters of heart tissue that trigger the erratic rhythm, with less damage to surrounding tissue than older heat-based methods. Medtronic's version, called PulseSelect, was the first of its kind approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, cleared in December 2023.

A crowded race with a very wide track

The market for this technology is competitive but still young. Johnson and Johnson's Varipulse system held the largest share of the US market at 47% in 2025. Boston Scientific's Farapulse held 31.6%. Medtronic sat in third place at 13%.

That gap helps explain why Medtronic's chief financial officer, Thierry Pieton, called this business "still in the early stages of its trajectory" on an investor call. The company's cardiac ablation products grew 88% globally in the quarter and 139% in the United States. Pieton said the company expects to outpace the broader market by more than three times in the next quarter, though he acknowledged growth rates will slow as the company compares itself against increasingly strong results from prior periods.

Catching Johnson and Johnson and Boston Scientific from 13% market share is a real challenge. But the total number of patients who could benefit from this technology is so large, and the current treatment rate so low, that even a third-place competitor can post nearly triple-digit growth for multiple consecutive quarters. The competition here is less about taking patients from rivals and more about expanding who gets treated at all.

What this means beyond the financials

The cardiovascular segment brought in $3.9 billion for the quarter, growing nearly 20% year over year. Medtronic's neuroscience and medical-surgical divisions each grew roughly 10%, adding $2.7 billion and $2.3 billion respectively.

For patients, the practical stakes are real. AFib is frequently undertreated, partly because older ablation methods carried higher complication risks and required longer recovery. If pulsed-field ablation proves safer and more effective at scale, more people who currently manage the condition with daily medication may become candidates for a procedure that could resolve it. The race between Medtronic, Johnson and Johnson, Boston Scientific, and Abbott to improve these devices and expand access will, in a direct way, shape how many of those 37 million people get treated and how well.

For Medtronic, the more immediate question is whether it can close the gap on its two larger rivals before the easy growth from being a new entrant starts to fade.