Abbott Vascular: The Now-Ready-For-Prime-Time Player

Four years ago, lured into a mainstream cardiovascular business by the promise of drug-eluting stents, Abbott set about revamping its medical products business in an effort to create a device business that would rival its pharmaceutical business in financial returns. What was at first a niche strategy, aimed at bringing small, but interesting technologies to interventionalists, has become a more broad-based play that, company officials hope, will place them among the leaders in vascular devices.