Abbott Laboratories is aiming to show it's back on track after a turbulent year working toward two major acquisitions. The Abbott Park, Ill.-based company closed its $25 billion purchase of St. Jude Medical Inc. at the start of last quarter, which doubled its medical device sales for the period. It also agreed last week to an amended deal with diagnostics acquisition target Alere, reducing the deal value to $5.3 billion from $5.8 billion; it's slated to close next quarter. With the logistics of the St. Jude and Alere deals largely behind it, Abbott is focused...

Abbott Laboratories is aiming to show it's back on track after a turbulent year working toward two major acquisitions. The Abbott Park, Ill.-based company closed its $25 billion purchase of St. Jude Medical Inc. at the start of last quarter, which doubled its medical device sales for the period. It also agreed last week to an amended deal with diagnostics acquisition target Alere, reducing the deal value to $5.3 billion from $5.8 billion; it's slated to close next quarter.

At the start of 2016, Johnson & Johnson (J&J) undertook a massive restructuring aimed at turning around its medical device business. The New Brunswick, N.J., conglomerate has been gradually swapping in high-growth device businesses and ushering out low-growth ones, a disciplined, rational effort that seems to be starting to pay off. During the first quarter, J&J's medical device sales grew by 3 percent to $6.3 billion; that's a marked improvement over the first quarter in 2016 when they shrank by 2.4 percent to $6.1 billion. "Medical devices are about on par now with next year,...