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COBE Cardiovascular, founded in 1964, is a member of the Sorin group of companies dedicated to delivering therapeutic solutions in the treatment of cardiovascular disease. Our family of companies has a long and rich history of providing innovative products for the cardiovascular surgeon, the perfusionist and the patient. With the strength of our sister companies, no other organization in the marketplace can offer the breadth of products and services to our customers today.
As we move forward into the future, we will continue to leverage the strengths of our unique organizations to work with clinicians to identify and develop products, technologies and therapies that continue to meet the needs of our customers and impact patient outcomes.
The Sorin Group is a world leader in Cardiac Surgery with a growing presence in Electrophysiology, Pacing, Interventional Cardiology and Renal Care. As a medical technology leader focused on the development of products used to treat cardiovascular and renal diseases, Sorin's breakthrough, proprietary technology has the potential to create a new industry benchmark in Vascular Intervention. For over thirty years, the world's medical community has known and appreciated the companies and brands of the Sorin Group: Dideco, Sorin Biomedica Cardio, ELA Medical, Mitroflow, Sorin Biomedica CRM, CarboMedics, COBE Cardiovascular , Stöckert, Sorin LifeWatch, Bellco and Soludia.
The Sorin Group of companies is committed to use its wealth of knowledge and technological expertise acquired through decades of research and development, to create products and services that deliver the highest level of quality. Sorin operates in more than 80 countries and has over 4,800 employees.
For a brief introduction of the Sorin Group, please view our introductory video.
COBE Laboratories, Inc. was founded in 1964 by Bob Collins and Ran Bellows. While working at a medical company in California, Bob and Ran identified an opportunity to supply pre-assembled custom tubing sets for cardiopulmonary bypass during a time when clinicians were assembling their own perfusion circuits. Thus, our company was born in Bob Collins' garage, where the assembling of custom heart-lung packs was done.
COBE Laboratories, Inc. moved to Colorado in 1967 and grew rapidly by expanding into the renal care product area. The company initially entered the oxygenator business in 1973 by acquiring the Optiflo® oxygenator from Galen Laboratories in California. Continuing to expand their worldwide market presence resulted in the development of a distribution agreement with Stöckert Instrumente in Munich, Germany, for heart-lung machines. When Pfizer acquired Stöckert Instrumente, we began manufacturing heart-lung machines in 1982, and in 1984 introduced the COBE Cardiovascular Perfusion Equipment.
A significant milestone in the growth of the cardiovascular business and a major advance in cardiopulmonary bypass was the introduction of the CML® oxygenator in 1982, which was the first integrated open system membrane oxygenator. It is widely accepted that this significant product innovation, in combination with the integrated venous cardiotomy filter, was instrumental in driving the conversion from bubble to membrane oxygenators. In 1988, the company expanded into the autologous blood processing business with the acquisition of the Baylor Rapid Autologous Transfusion (BRAT®) blood processing equipment.
A major event in our history was the 1990 acquisition of COBE Laboratories, Inc. by Gambro AB, a Swedish renal care company. At this time, the cardiovascular division of COBE Laboratories, Inc. was transformed into COBE Cardiovascular. With the help of this new parent company, many significant and innovative new product introductions from COBE Cardiovascular were made in the 1990s, including the SAT/HCT® Monitor, Optima™ Hollow Fiber and CML Duo® Flat Sheet Oxygenators, BRAT® Autologous Transfusion System, Blue Ribbon Pack® Perfusion Circuit, and COBE Cardiovascular Micro® Neonatal Oxygenator.
In November of 1998, an agreement was signed for the sale of the cardiovascular division by Gambro AB, to Italian-based Sorin Biomedica S.p.A., a major supplier and manufacturer of cardiovascular and autotransfusion products. With the acquisition, our company became part of the SNIA Medical Technologies Group.
The new company that was formed is COBE Cardiovascular, Inc., based in the existing COBE Cardiovascular facility in Arvada, Colorado. With the most comprehensive and advanced cardiopulmonary and autologous blood processing product offering, COBE Cardiovascular is dedicated to continue its history of excellence in developing and producing innovative cardiovascular and autologous transfusion therapy products.
In January 2004, SNIA divested its non-medical businesses and reformed its medical companies as the Sorin Group.
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