December 23, 2008 - St. Jude Medical Inc. and MediGuide Inc. today signed a definitive merger agreement where MediGuide will become part of the St. Jude Medical Atrial Fibrillation Division.

December 23, 2008 - Volcano Corp., a manufacturer of products for the diagnosis and treatment of coronary and peripheral artery disease, said today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Axsun Technologies Inc., a privately-held company that is a developer and manufacturer of lasers and optical engines used in medical optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging systems and advan

December 22, 2008 - W. L. Gore & Associates last week said Rush University Medical Center in Chicago is the first medical center to enroll a patient in the Gore REDUCE Clinical Study using the percutaneous GORE HELEX Septal Occluder to close patent foramen ovale (PFO).

December 22, 2008 - ZOLL Medical Corp. recently said more than 12,000 patients at high risk of sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) have been prescribed the ZOLL LifeVest Wearable Defibrillator by their physician since it was approved by the FDA in 2002.

The company said this represents more than 2,000 years of cumulative patient time wearing a LifeVest, and, in any given month, more than 1,000 patients are being protected from sudden death wearing the LifeVest, Zoll said.

December 22, 2008 - Medtronic Inc. today said it acquired the remaining 1.5 million shares of CryoCath Technologies Inc. so it is now 100 percent owned by Medtronic.

Medtronic exercised its right to compulsorily acquire the CryoCath shares under Section 51 of the Companies Act (Québec). The compulsory acquisition followed an offer dated October 3, 2008 for all of the CryoCath shares at a price of Cdn. $8.75 per CryoCath share, which had been accepted by shareholders holding approximately 96.3 percent of the CryoCath shares.