Origin

The company's founder, George D. LeMaitre, M.D., was a practicing vascular surgeon in Massachusetts, chief of surgery at Lawrence General Hospital,^[6][7] and a clinical instructor at his alma mater, the Tufts University School of Medicine.^[8] In 1981, LeMaitre treated an elderly colleague who required a procedure to reroute blood flow in his leg in order to avoid a potential amputation.^[2] LeMaitre found it necessary to develop a valvulotome to enable the procedure.^[2] Unsatisfied with the options that were available to him, LeMaitre worked with an engineer to design a new device himself. His first patented valvulotome could be used by a surgeon to cut valves in peripheral veins without the requirement of direct vision.^[9] As a result, the surgeon could prepare veins for arterial bypass with smaller incisions and less tissue trauma.^[10]

LeMaitre succeeded in treating the patient with this invention, leading to further efforts to improve the technology between 1981 and 1984.^[2] LeMaitre was so pleased with the success of this new device that he spent the next two years attempting to interest medical product companies in producing it.^[2] When none agreed to do so, he mortgaged his house and started his own company in 1986 to introduce the LeMaitre Valvulotome to his colleagues. That same year, the invention was approved by the Food and Drug Administration.^[2]

Growth and development

Following LeMaitre's incorporation of the company, LeMaitre's son, George W. LeMaitre, joined the company and helped grow it from a family-owned company to a publicly held global corporation.^[2] In 1996, LeMaitre Vascular introduced the expandable LeMaitre valvulotome, which superseded the original circular-blade LeMaitre valvulotomes.^[11] After raising $3 million from investors in 1998, the senior LeMaitre decided to seek investments from other vascular surgeons. By 2004, when George D. LeMaitre stepped down as chair of the Board of Directors,^[8] the company had operations and facilities in Sulzbach, Germany, Phoenix, Arizona, St. Petersburg, Florida, Brymbo, Wales and beginning that year in Tokyo, Japan.^[2] Later in 2004, the company adopted a lean manufacturing approach to speed product production, and a 2005 profile described LeMaitre Vascular as a $30.5 million company with about 200 employees and "reporting explosive growth".^[2] By 2005, LeMaitre himself was noted as being "semiretired" from LeMaitre Vascular, and "focused on a second career in writing".^[2] In 2006, the company prepared an initial public offering of 6 million common shares, planned to be priced between $8 and $10 per share.^[12] In the late 2000s, LeMaitre had a distribution deal with California-based vascular products company Endologix, which the latter bought out in 2011.^[4] George D. LeMaitre died in 2018.^[8]

As of 2022, LeMaitre Vascular has continued to develop, manufacture and market disposable and implantable vascular devices for use in both open vascular surgeries and minimally invasive procedures. LeMaitre Vascular's product portfolio has continued to grow as a result of the company's research and subsequent development of new vascular devices, including its most recent generation of LeMaitre's original valvulotome.^[13] The company has also expanded through various acquisitions. LeMaitre acquired Applied Medical's vascular clot management business for $14.2 million in 2018, and the biologic patch business of Admedus for $15.5 million in October 2019.^[14][15] In mid-2020, the company acquired vascular graft-maker Artegraft for $90 million, anticipating that the newly acquired product lines would be a substantial proportion of LeMaitre's U.S. sales going forward.^[16]

Product lines

As of 2005, the company was noted to have obtained a quarter of its revenues from sales of valvulotomes, with other products including "embolectomy catheters, carotid shunts, and radiopaque tape".^[2] As of 2022, the company delineated its 13 product lines into six categories:

• Aortic
• AV access
• Cardiac
• Carotid
• Lower extremity
• Neuro

Acquisitions

Since its establishment, LeMaitre Vascular has also made acquisitions of product lines obtained by purchasing the line from other companies, or through purchasing another company in its entirety. These include: