Medical Device Company Intelligence Reports provide a full review of the company's activities, from its origins to its latest corporate activity, including mergers and acquisitions, agreements, divestitures, major purchasing contracts and litigation. Sections are included on products, international activities and R&D, as well as a full, in-depth five year financial analysis. An introduction to each report and a full table of contents is provided for review. More than 60 Medical Device Company Intelligence Reports are currently available. Boston Scientific, headquartered in Natick, Massachusetts, USA, develops and manufactures products for use in minimally-invasive procedures. The company's products are offered by three dedicated business groups; Cardiovascular, Endosurgery and Neuromodulation.

The Cardiovascular organisation focuses on products and technologies for use in interventional cardiology, peripheral interventions, cardiac and vascular surgery, cardiac rhythm management (CRM), electrophysiology and neurovascular procedures. The key product in this area is the Taxus paclitaxel-eluting coronary stent system, which holds the second position in the global market for drug-eluting stents (DESs) after Johnson & Johnson's Cordis franchise's Cypher product. Taxus and Cypher are also the only two DESs available in the US, where Taxus has the leading market position.

The CRM and cardiac surgery operations were gained by Boston Scientific's much-publicised US$27 billion merger with Guidant in April 2006, where it out-bid its main competitor, Johnson & Johnson, that had previously entered into a merger agreement with Guidant. In order to gain antitrust approval for the transaction, Guidant's vascular intervention and endovascular businesses were sold to Abbott, with both Boston Scientific and Abbott sharing rights to Guidant's Xience V DES programme. As a result, Boston Scientific is the only company with access to two DES platforms and two DES drugs. The company will market the Xience V product as the Promus DES and recently received the CE mark for the product.

The merger added implantable defibrillator systems, including implantable cardiac resynchronisation therapy defibrillators, as well as pacemakers and cardiac surgery products, to the Boston Scientific portfolio. However, Guidant's CRM business has faced problems since the beginning of 2005, when it undertook the withdrawal of around 200,000 products. While it seemed these recalls would enable Guidant to rectify any issues before it merged with Boston Scientific, the problems continued and Boston Scientific issued a further recall of products affecting over 27,000 patients in June 2006. These recalls have affected the market's confidence in Guidant's CRM products and have led to the filing of several lawsuits.

The transaction also came at a cost to Boston Scientific, with the company assuming a large amount to debt and giving equity to Abbott, as well as having to pay US$705 million to J&J as a result of its Guidant merger termination. In addition, J&J has recently filed a lawsuit against Guidant, Boston Scientific and Abbott related to the merger, seeking damages of at least US$5.5 billion.