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 - C. R. Bard Inc. recently received FDA clearance to market the E-Luminexx Vascular Stent - a flexible, self-expanding nitinol stent.

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 - Edwards Lifesciences Corp. recently said it expects to drive sales growth and profitability in 2009 and beyond.

During its 2008 investor conference in New York City Dec. 11, Edwards' management presented details of the company’s growth plans, market expansion opportunities and its financial outlook for 2009.

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 – Digisonics recently made several new installations of its DigiView CVIS for cardiovascular image analysis and reporting.

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.

December 19, 2008 - GE Healthcare’s Medical Quality Improvement Consortium (MQIC) quality data system was selected by the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) as a reporting registry for the 2008 program, and GE expects this registry certification to continue in 2009.

December 18, 2008 - MiCardia announced the successful implant in two patients with the new new Dynaplasty mitral valve repair technology at the department of cardiovascular surgery, University Hospital, Kiel, Germany, the first week of December.

This marks the commencement of the company’s European Dynamic Annuloplasty Activation (DYANA) Study designed to provide data for CE Mark of the company’s Dynaplasty technology.

December 18, 2008 - ZOLL Medical Corp. this week received FDA 510(k) clearance to market and sell the ZOLL R Series Code-Ready clinical defibrillator with a WiFi option that allows wireless communication between the defibrillator and standard hospital networks to help ensure code-readiness and download of patient data.

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