'Lead-less' pacemaker makes Cleveland Clinic's list of top medical inventions

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St. Jude Medical

Nanostim's leadless pacemaker has approval to sell in Europe. The Euro coin is shown to give a sense of scale.

Katharine Grayson

Staff reporter- Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal

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Cleveland Clinic ranked the lead-less pacemaker No. 7 on its list of the top 10 medical inventions for 2015.

The clinic didn't say which manufacturer's lead-less pacemaker it likes so much, but St. Jude Medical Inc. has one such device approved for sale in Europe. Medtronic Inc., based in Fridley, and Boston Scientific Corp. also are working on their own versions of the product.

St. Jude's device, called Nanostim, is about the size of a AAA battery and is implanted inside the heart. It doesn't rely on wires called leads that typically connect pacemakers to the heart. Several device makers recalled leads in recent years, as the wires can break or malfunction over time.

Little Canada-based St. Jude (NYSE: STJ) picked up the technology last year when it paid$123.5 million to buy Milpitas, Calif.-based Nanostim.

Cleveland Clinic praised lead-less pacemakers for improving patient safety.

"Vitamin-sized wireless cardiac pacemakers can be implanted directly in the heart without surgery and eliminate malfunction complications and restriction on daily physical activities."

The clinic ranked a mobile stroke-treatment unit as its No. 1 medical invention for the year.

Katharine Grayson covers med tech, clean tech, technology, health care and venture capital.