Stryker Corporation is an American multinational medical technologies corporation based in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Stryker's products include implants used in joint replacement and trauma surgeries; surgical equipment and surgical navigation systems; endoscopic and communications systems; patient handling and emergency medical equipment; neurosurgical, neurovascular and spinal devices; as well as other medical device products used in a variety of medical specialties.
Cardiac surgery, or cardiovascular surgery, is surgery on the heart or great vessels performed by cardiac surgeons. It is often used to treat complications of ischemic heart disease ; to correct congenital heart disease; or to treat valvular heart disease from various causes, including endocarditis, rheumatic heart disease, and atherosclerosis. It also includes heart transplantation.
Medtronic plc is an American-Irish medical device company. The company's operational and executive headquarters are in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and its legal headquarters are in Ireland due to its acquisition of Irish-based Covidien in 2015. While it primarily operates in the United States, it operates in more than 150 countries and employs over 90,000 people. It develops and manufactures healthcare technologies and therapies.
Aortic valve replacement is a cardiac surgery procedure whereby a failing aortic valve is replaced with an artificial heart valve. The aortic valve may need to be replaced because of aortic regurgitation, or if the valve is narrowed by stenosis.
An artificial heart valve is a one-way valve implanted into a person's heart to replace a heart valve that is not functioning properly. Artificial heart valves can be separated into three broad classes: mechanical heart valves, bioprosthetic tissue valves and engineered tissue valves.
Mitral valve repair is a cardiac surgery procedure performed by cardiac surgeons to treat stenosis (narrowing) or regurgitation (leakage) of the mitral valve. The mitral valve is the "inflow valve" for the left side of the heart. Blood flows from the lungs, where it picks up oxygen, through the pulmonary veins, to the left atrium of the heart. After the left atrium fills with blood, the mitral valve allows blood to flow from the left atrium into the heart's main pumping chamber called the left ventricle. It then closes to keep blood from leaking back into the left atrium or lungs when the ventricle contracts (squeezes) to push blood out to the body. It has two flaps, or leaflets, known as cusps.
Intuitive Surgical, Inc. is an American biotechnology company that develops, manufactures, and markets robotic products designed to improve clinical outcomes of patients through minimally invasive surgery, most notably with the da Vinci Surgical System. The company is part of the Nasdaq-100 and S&P 500. As of 31 December 2021, Intuitive Surgical had an installed base of 6,730 da Vinci Surgical Systems, including 4,139 in the U.S., 1,199 in Europe, 1,050 in Asia, and 342 in the rest of the world.
St. Jude Medical, Inc. was an American global medical device company headquartered in Little Canada, Minnesota, U.S., a suburb of Saint Paul. The company had more than 20 principal operations and manufacturing facilities worldwide with products sold in more than 100 countries. Its major markets include the United States, Europe, Latin America and Asia-Pacific. The company was named after Jude the Apostle, the patron saint of lost causes.
The Sorin Group was a medical products group based in Italy, with significant operations in France, the United States, and Japan, specializing in cardiac devices. Its product lines include replacement heart valves, oxygenators, perfusion tubing sets, cardiothoracic surgery accessories, data monitoring, heart-lung machines, autotransfusion systems, and cannulae, and a line of blood management products.
Artivion, Inc. is a distributor of cryogenically preserved human tissues for cardiac and vascular transplant applications and develops medical devices. Among its products are human heart valves, which are treated to remove excess cellular material and antigens, and BioGlue surgical adhesive.
C. R. Bard, Inc., headquartered in Murray Hill, New Jersey, USA, was a developer, manufacturer, and marketer of medical technologies in the vascular medicine, urology, oncology, and surgical specialty fields. C. R. Bard marketed its products and services worldwide to hospitals, individual health care professionals, extended care facilities, and alternate site facilities. An S&P 500 company with approximately 14,000 employees in 2015, Bard is perhaps best known for having introduced the Foley catheter in 1934.
The ZEUS Robotic Surgical System (ZRSS) was a medical robot designed to assist in surgery, originally produced by the American robotics company Computer Motion. Its predecessor, AESOP, was cleared by the Food and Drug Administration in 1994 to assist surgeons in minimally invasive surgery. The ZRSS itself was cleared by the FDA seven years later, in 2001. ZEUS had three robotic arms, which were remotely controlled by the surgeon. The first arm, AESOP, was a voice-activated endoscope, allowing the surgeon to see inside the patient's body. The other two robotic arms mimicked the surgeon's movements to make precise incisions and extractions. ZEUS was discontinued in 2003, following the merger of Computer Motion with its rival Intuitive Surgical; the merged company instead developed the Da Vinci Surgical System.
Manny Villafaña, a child of Puerto Rican immigrants, he attended Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx. He began his medical career in 1964 at medical-device exporter Picker International. In 1967, he was hired away from Picker by Earl Bakken, CEO of Medtronic to become their first international sales administrator.
Mazor Robotics was an Israeli medical device company and manufacturer of a robotic guidance system for spine surgery that was acquired by Medtronic in December 2018. Surgeons that utilized Mazor Robotics Renaissance generally specialize in orthopedic surgery or neurosurgery.
Edwards Lifesciences is an American medical technology company headquartered in Irvine, California, specializing in artificial heart valves and hemodynamic monitoring. It developed the SAPIEN transcatheter aortic heart valve made of cow tissue within a balloon-expandable, cobalt-chromium frame, deployed via catheter. The company has manufacturing facilities at the Irvine headquarters, as well as in Draper, Utah; Costa Rica; the Dominican Republic; Puerto Rico; and Singapore; and is building a new facility due to be completed in 2021 in Limerick, Ireland.
Dr R Ravi Kumar is an Indian heart surgeon, and a pioneer in robot-assisted heart surgery.
Globus Medical, Inc. is a publicly traded medical device company headquartered in Audubon, Pennsylvania, United States. Globus is focused on the design, development, and commercialization of products that enable surgeons to promote healing in patients with musculoskeletal disorders.
Christoph Huber MD, FMH, FECTS is a Swiss cardiac surgeon who is a professor and the head of the Division of Cardiac and Vascular Surgery at the University Hospital Geneva, Switzerland.
Ellen Roche is an Irish biomedical engineer and Associate Professor at MIT in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Institute of Medical Engineering and Science. She has contributed to heart failure prevention with her inventions, the Harvard Ventricular Assist Device (HarVAD), a soft-robotic sleeve device that goes around the heart, squeezing and twisting it to maintain the heart’s functionality, and Therepi, a reservoir that attaches directly to damaged heart tissue.
The Hancock Aortic Tissue Valve is a prosthetic heart valve used in cardiac surgery to replace a damaged or diseased aortic valve. It is a bioprosthetic valve, meaning it is constructed using biological tissues, specifically porcine (pig) valve tissue. This valve is widely utilized in the field of cardiovascular surgery to restore proper blood flow through the heart.
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