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OK, I've been living with severe low back pain for about 7 years now. Physical Therapy was a joke, Steroid injections, nope. Epidurals? Nope. Laminectomy? Did some but not enough. RF nerve ablation? Catastrophe. Now they want me to try an electronic implant. And thereby hangs a tale. One doctor is pushing Medtronic, another doctor (in the same medical group!) says no, Abbot Labs is the same but has much better support. So I asks you - anybody have experience with either of them? Comments?

BEIJING (AP) — Medical device maker Medtronic has been fined $17 million by Chinese anti-monopoly regulators in the latest effort by Beijing to force down what it sees as unreasonably high prices. Regulators concluded Medtronic, which supplies cardiovascular, restorative, and diabetes-related medical devices, suppressed competition by enforcing minimum prices its distributors were required to charge, the government said Wednesday. Foreign automakers, milk suppliers and other companies have faced similar penalties. Setting minimum prices is a common tactic in other markets but lawyers say Beijing appears to see them as a barrier to competition. "Competition in China's high-value consumables and implantable...

Automated insulin delivery system will ease some of the burden of living with the condition "This first-of-its-kind technology can provide people with type 1 diabetes greater freedom to live their lives without having to consistently and manually monitor baseline glucose levels and administer insulin," Dr. Jeffrey Shuren, director of the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health, said in an agency news release. The device -- Medtronic's MiniMed 670G -- is what's known as a hybrid closed-loop system. That means it monitors blood sugar and then delivers necessary background (also known as basal) insulin doses. The device will also shut...

Experts in health care and information technology agree on the future’s biggest opportunity: the creation of a new computational model that will link together all of the massive computers that now hold medical information. IBM is today staking its claim to be a major player in creating that cloud, and to use its Watson artificial intelligence to make sense of the flood of medical data that will result. The new effort uses new, innovative systems to keep data secure, IBM executives say, even while allowing software to use them remotely. Big Blue is certainly putting some muscle into medicine. Some...

Storied Minnesota medical-device company Medtronic will move its headquarters to Ireland after shareholders approved a merger Tuesday with Dublin-based health care supplier Covidien. The controversial $43 billion "inversion" deal will allow the new company, to be called Medtronic PLC, to reduce its corporate tax liability as it repatriates cash stored overseas. But the deal has irked longtime Twin Cities shareholders, who will face significant capital gains taxes on their Medtronic holdings. In preliminary vote totals, shareholders representing about 75 percent of Medtronic's outstanding shares approved the deal, general counsel Brad Lerman announced to a special shareholder meeting in Minneapolis. And...

Medtronic Inc. said Tuesday that it is "fully committed" to completing its deal to buy Covidien PLC, which has come under scrutiny over a controversial tax tactic that has drawn criticism from U.S. government officials. The Fridley-based company also posted fiscal first-quarter results that exceeded analysts' expectations as the medical-devices maker reaped strong revenue from its U.S. operations. "Our growth was broad-based across businesses and geographies," chairman and chief executive Omar Ishrak said in a news release. "I was especially pleased that our innovation pipeline is delivering strong results, particularly in the U.S., which had its highest revenue growth performance...

When Rick Perry stumps for businesses to relocate, at least he’s cheering for his home state of Texas as the final destination. In Minnesota, we have the unusual experience of having a governor laud a corporation for moving its headquarters out of the state — and out of the country. Medtronic, a leading manufacturer of medical devices, acquired an Irish firm in the same sector, but will move its corporate headquarters to Ireland rather than transfer Covidien’s executive operations to Minnesota (via Gary Gross): “As I look at the project as governor of Minnesota, this is a good deal...

Last August, I shared a list of companies that “re-domiciled” in other nations so they could escape America’s punitive “worldwide” tax system. This past April, I augmented that list with some commentary about whether Walgreen’s might become a Swiss-based company. And in May, I pontificated about Pfizer’s effort to re-domicile in the United Kingdom. Well, to paraphrase what Ronald Reagan said to Jimmy Carter in the 1980 presidential debate, here we go again. Here’s the opening few sentences from a report in the Wall Street Journal. Medtronic Inc.’s agreement on Sunday to buy rival medical-device maker Covidien COV PLC for...

Is Medtronic's massive international corporate merger a billion-dollar tax dodge, an indictment of the U.S. tax code or a business-savvy work-around that could spur investment and growth in the Twin Cities? The answer depends on whom you ask. The $42.9 billion cash-and-stock purchase of Covidien, which was announced Sunday, comes with plans for Medtronic to decamp its executive suite to Ireland, where Covidien is based. It also will nearly double the size of the Fridley-based medical device maker and likely result in no significant change in its 8,000-strong Twin Cities workforce. The company is talking about adding 1,000 workers locally....

U.S. medical device maker Medtronic Inc said on Sunday it had agreed to buy Covidien Plc for $42.9 billion in cash and stock and move its executive base to Ireland in the latest transaction aiming for lower corporate tax rates abroad. While the deal will allow Medtronic to reduce its overall global tax burden, the Minneapolis-based company said it was driven by a complementary strategy with Covidien on medical technology rather than tax considerations

Freedom Works has put together a list of companies that will be laying of employees as a result of President Barack Obama's health care law: Welch Allyn Welch Allyn, a company that manufactures medical diagnostic equipment in central New York, announced in September that they would be laying off 275 employees, or roughly 10% of their workforce over the next three years. One of the major reasons discussed for the layoffs was a proactive response to the Medical Device Tax mandated by the new healthcare law. Dana Holding Corp. As recently as a week ago, a global auto parts manufacturing...

Faced with no growth in two of its key medical-device markets, Fridley-based Medtronic said it would eliminate about 1,000 jobs, including 250 positions in the Twin Cities. Most of the local job cuts -- which were first disclosed by the company earlier this month -- are in Medtronic's heart rhythm device unit, which is based in Mounds View and makes pacemakers and implantable cardiac defibrillators. But Medtronic officials also said on Tuesday, May 22, that the company plans to hire 1,500 workers over the next 11 months. Many of the new hires will work in faster-growing markets overseas, but there...

After Rob Summers was struck by a hit-and-run driver in 2006 and left paralyzed from the chest down, he faced the grim prospect of spending the rest of his life in a wheelchair. And despite three years of intensive therapy, he showed no signs of improving. But after becoming the first patient to undergo an experimental treatment, he can now do something no one else in his condition has ever been able to do: stand up; move his hips, knees and ankles; wiggle his toes; and even take a few steps, Summers and his doctors announced Thursday. "This procedure has...

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Medical device maker Medtronic Inc paid almost $800,000 in consulting fees to a former U.S. Army surgeon accused of fabricating a key study, according to published reports. The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal said the payments were made to Timothy Kuklo, who is accused of making up a report that showed positive results for Infuse, one of Medtronic's important spine products. The newspapers reported that the Army had said the study was based on false information, and that Kuklo had forged signatures of purported co-authors of the study. Medtronic told The Wall Street...

LAST RESORTS Squeeze my hand, Stephen," the surgeon called. "Wiggle your feet." In an operating room at New York Weill Cornell Medical Center, doctors watched intently as Stephen R. Neiley III, roused from general anesthesia, gave a squeeze and a wiggle and went back to sleep. Reassured that the electrodes they had just implanted in his brain had done no harm, they went back to work. The next step was to tunnel wires from the electrodes through Mr. Neiley's scalp and neck to a pacemaker-like gadget that would be implanted in his chest. The operation was an experiment, with a...