Boston Scientific Agrees to Buy Heart Technology : Acquisitions: The deal would broaden the product line of the maker of surgical devices.
Boston Scientific Corp., a fast-growing maker of sophisticated miniature surgical devices, said Wednesday that it will buy Heart Technology Inc., a pioneer of a machine that drills open clogged arteries.
The purchase is the latest in a series by Boston Scientific, based in suburban Natick, Mass., as it diversifies its products. The company, which earned $80 million last year on revenue of $448.9 million, is projected by some analysts to double both figures this year.
Boston Scientific Chief Executive Pete Nicholas said the $500-million stock swap purchase of Heart Technology will broaden his company’s line of devices for treating circulatory diseases without extensive surgery.
Redmond, Wash.-based Heart Technology makes a device called a Rotablator used to remove fatty plaque on the walls of arteries in the heart and legs. The plaque is often deposited by the disease atherosclerosis and is a major cause of heart attacks when it clogs arteries supplying oxygen to the heart.
The Rotablator system is snaked through arteries at the end of a long, flexible plastic tube called a catheter, usually inserted through a small incision in a leg. A football shaped burr coated with tiny diamond crystals provides thousands of cutting surfaces and rotates to remove plaque.
The technology has become a fast-growing therapy since it was approved for sale in the United States two years ago, the companies said.
Heart Technology’s revenue nearly tripled last year to $58.4 million and it earned a profit of $14 million contrasted with a loss of $2 million a year earlier.
Most of Boston Scientific’s products include catheter technology, which allows for surgical procedures without large incisions in the body.
Boston Scientific’s catheter products allow doctors to view and treat diseases of the heart, digestive and urinary systems. One of the more well-known is called balloon angioplasty in which a catheter with a balloon at its tip is inserted to the point of an artery clog, inflated with saltwater to clear the artery, then removed.
In February, Boston Scientific settled an antitrust complaint with the Federal Trade Commission allowing it to buy two similar companies, SciMed Life Systems Inc. of Minneapolis for $850 million and Cardiovascular Imaging Systems Inc. of Sunnyvale, Calif,. for $100 million. In March, it bought Vesica Medical Inc., a San Clemente-based company.
