Medtronic gets European approval for smallest pacemaker

[Star Tribune, April 15, 2015] Fifty-seven years ago, when Medtronic co-founder Earl Bakken invented the world’s first battery-powered transistor pacemaker, it was the size of a small book.

Medtronic’s latest is about as big as a vitamin.

The world’s biggest medical device company just grabbed the mantle for having the ­smallest pacemaker cleared for sale by a government regulator.

Dr. Charles Gornick, the cardiac arrhythmia director at Abbott Northwestern Hospital and the Micra principal investigator at the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation, was interviewed for this story. Read it at startribune.com.