Medtronic PLC is buying a Tennessee company and its nerve stimulator for bladder-control issues, bringing competition to a Minnetonka firm that makes a similar device.
Medtronic, the Ireland-based medical device maker that has its operating headquarters in Fridley, announced Monday that it has acquired the privately held Advanced Uro-Solutions, Inc.
Terms were not disclosed.
The Elizabethton, Tenn., company makes the Nuro percutaneous tibial nerve stimulation system, which is approved for sale in the United States. Medtronic said it intends to launch the device in the United States within a year.
"This addition to our existing portfolio of products approved to treat incontinence will allow us to offer a less-invasive solution and increase global patient access to neurostimulation therapy," a Medtronic spokesman said in an e-mail.
The Nuro would compete on the U.S. market with the Urgent PC Neuromodulation System, which is made by Minnetonka's Uroplasty Inc.
Both devices work the same way. In fact, Advanced Uro-Solutions got approval from the federal Food and Drug Administration in late 2013 by proving that its stimulator is substantially equivalent to Uroplasty's.
The devices work by delivering mild current from a battery-operated electric-pulse generator through an acupuncture needle to an area just under the skin of a patient's ankle. The current stimulates the tibial nerve, which can influence muscles around the bladder and pelvic floor via the body's sacral nerve.
