Boston Scientific Corporation, which specialises in medical devices for use in minimally invasive surgical procedures, is to add 45 "high calibre" jobs in Galway according to Tanáiste and Minister for Enterprise, Mary Coughlan, who is to make a formal announcement on an investment of €91 million at the plant, later today.

Last September Boston Scientific, announced an investment of €50 million in strategic Research and Development at Galway.

Boston Scientific was established in Galway in 1994 and is the largest manufacturing site within the corporation with over 3,000 people employed in the R&D and manufacture of cardiology and peripheral vascular products such as stents and catheters.

Tanáiste Mary Coughlan said a project of such global strategic importance to Boston Scientific, would help attract further international direct investment into Ireland.

Earlier this year, the company announced that its Donegal facility will close in 2010 with manufacturing moving to Galway. BS also closed a plant in Tullamore, which it had acquired via an acquisition.

BS has another major Irish facility in Clonmel, which it acquired through it takeover of rival Guidant in 2006.

Senior Vice President at Boston Scientific, Hank Kucheman, has said the Galway plant has a highly educated and technically skilled workforce and this was a key part of the decision to make a further strategic investment there.

The Wall Street Journal reports today that implanted defibrillators that resynchronize heartbeats slowed deterioration in patients with mild heart failure, according to a large study that could boost demand for the devices.

Preliminary results from the four-year study of 1,820 people were announced Tuesday by Boston Scientific, which makes the $30,000 devices known as cardiac resynchronization therapy defibrillators, or CRT-Ds, and sponsored the $38 million study.

The Journal says results could lead to broadened Food and Drug Administration approval for the devices and could expand the $6.2 billion market for implanted defibrillators, which have fallen well below the optimistic projections that fueled Boston Scientific’s $28.4 billion purchase of Guidant.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans with mild heart failure could be candidates for the devices. The condition, in which the heart beats out of sync and pumps blood inefficiently, is common after a heart attack and certain infections.