Medtronic announced today that it has acquired Aircraft Medical for $110 million. Aircraft Medical is a medical device company based in Edinburgh, Scotland that manufactures video laryngoscopes that are used by anesthesiologists and critical care clinicians to intubate patients.
The acquisition will add to Medtronic's portfolio of solutions for handling difficult airways and addressing respiratory compromise, which includes respiratory insufficiency, failure, and arrest. In 2007, respiratory insufficiency, arrest, and failure led to 385,000 inpatient stays and $7.7 billion in costs, according to an AHRQ statistical brief.
Aircraft Medical's portfolio includes its McGRATH MAC and McGRATH Series 5 video laryngoscopes. The devices allow clinicians to view a patient's vocal cords so they can insert the breathing tube into the trachea faster and more effectively.
According to the American Society of Anesthesiologists Task Force on Management of the Difficult Airway, video laryngoscopy is related to an increase in the amount of successful intubations, improved laryngeal views and more successful first-attempt intubations than direct laryngoscopy among patients with difficult airways.
Medtronic has acquired a number of other companies in the past six months, including Aptus Endosystems, Twelve Inc., Medina Medical, RF Surgical Systems, and Lazarus Effect. As a result, it has added technology for endovascular aneurysm repair and thoracic endovascular aneurysm repair, a transcatheter mitral valve replacement device, treatments for vascular abnormalities of the brain, a detection system for preventing retained surgical sponges and acute ischemic stroke products that facilitate the capture and removal of clots.
