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. Headquartered in Irvine, California, USA, Edwards Lifesciences designs, develops, manufactures and markets a comprehensive line of products and technologies to treat advanced cardiovascular disease. The company is principally focused on heart valve therapy, critical care, cardiac surgery systems and vascular products.

Edwards claims to be the overall global leader in heart valve therapy, as well as the world leader in tissue valves and repair. The company claims its Perimount valve is the most widely-prescribed tissue heart valve in the world. The latest-generation Perimount valves, Magna and Theon, feature Edwards' new ThermaFix process which is designed to significantly reduce leaflet calcification, one of the primary causes of tissue valve deterioration. Edwards is also currently developing technologies for the percutaneous (catheter-based) repair and replacement of heart valves which can address a greater number of patients than are currently treated with conventional open-heart surgery. Edwards has three percutaneous valve programmes under way and, in March 2005, the first patient was treated in a new US clinical trial of the company's Cribier-Edwards aortic heart valve implanted without open-heart surgery (see Research Projects).

In critical care, Edwards offers haemodynamic monitoring systems, disposable pressure transducers and central venous access products for fluid and drug delivery. The company believes the latest addition to its monitoring range, the recently launched FloTrac sensor which works with the company's Vigileo monitor, could become one of the most important developments in critical care monitoring since the Edwards Swan-Ganz pulmonary artery catheter, which it claims is considered the gold standard of haemodynamic monitoring.

Edwards' vascular portfolio includes a line of balloon catheter-based products, surgical clips and inserts, artificial implantable grafts, as well as stents used in the treatment of peripheral vascular disease. The latest offering in Edwards' LifeStent peripheral stent line-up, the FDA-cleared LifeStent NT Stent, is currently being evaluated in the RESILIENT trial, the first randomised trial of a nitinol stent for use in treating long lesions in the superficial femoral artery (see Products).

The company's cardiac surgery systems portfolio comprises a diverse line of products for use during cardiac surgery, including oxygenators, blood containers, filters and other disposable products used during cardiopulmonary bypass procedures, as well as cannulae and transmyocardial revascularisation (TMR) technology.

The company's other distributed products include intra-aortic balloon pumps and other products sold primarily though Edwards' distribution network in Japan.