There are some very big dogs in the cardiovascular device space and Abbott Laboratories is about to become one of the biggest in the yard. The Abbott Park, Ill.-based company made a bid to acquire St. Jude Medical Inc. for $25 billion plus the assumption of $5.7 billion in debt. The deal sets St. Jude shareholders up to get $46.75 in cash and 0.8708 shares of Abbott common stock, for a total consideration of roughly $85 a share. The price represents a 37 percent premium to St. Jude's closing price Wednesday.

It took 10 years but Boston Scientific (BSX) may have finally overcome its ill-advised 2006 Guidant acquisition. The company’s shares hit a decade high Wednesday, at one point spiking nearly 12 percent to $22.05 after knocking its first quarter sales out of the park. Listening to the earnings call, the baseball fan in me couldn’t help but draw comparisons between the company’s better-than-expected earnings and what is already a record-setting season for the Chicago Cubs. Sure, it seemed like a stretch at first, but the more I thought about it the more the analogy made sense. After all, the Cubs...

Boston Scientific Corp. (NYSE: BSX) shares hit a decade high Wednesday, spiking as much as 11.73 percent ($2.31) to $22 in afternoon trading, the highest the stock has been since the weeks after Boston Scientific closed on its $27.2 billion acquisition of Guidant in April 2006, a move that saddled the company with enormous debt.

Although Boston Scientific Corp. released its first quarter results before the opening bell Wednesday, some investors may already be looking ahead to the second half of the year now that the company has secured FDA approval for a key product in the cardiac rhythm management business.

Analysts and market researchers often try to put a monetary value on an emerging sector but estimating the market potential of a new technology category is far from an exact science. The liquid biopsy market is a prime example of that challenge.

With a market opportunity in the billions (as much as $20 billion by some estimates), diagnostic companies are rushing the liquid biopsy floodgates with new tests designed to make finding and monitoring cancer as easy as a blood draw or urine sample. This week, in a two-part series, Medical Device Daily will explore both the business opportunities and the clinical potential of this growing market.

Despite beating analyst expectations on both sales and EPS during the first quarter, St. Jude Medical Inc.'s earnings call this week left analysts with lingering questions regarding the company's pipeline and growth catalysts. St. Jude, of St. Paul, Minn., made $1.448 billion in sales during the quarter, which topped analysts' expectations by $10 million (consensus was $1.438 billion). The company's EPS also came in better than expected at 90 cents a share (consensus was 88 cents).

Johnson & Johnson(J&J) reported a strong first quarter overall, beating quarterly earnings forecasts on prescription drug revenue, but the company's medical device business has seen better days.

As many as 19 percent of colorectal surgery patients experience leakage at the point of surgical connection, which can be a life threatening complication. The problem is so common with gastrointestinal (GI) resections — and so dangerous for patients — that it's often what keeps colorectal surgeons awake at night.