WITHIN the last month, Avecor Cardiovascular of Bellshill has taken on 15 extra staff to cope with an ``explosive growth'' in the sales of their medical devices used in open-heart surgery.

The company, which manufactures artificial lung equipment used during the operations and tubing to connect patient and respirator, has seen an acceleration in its growth since the start of the year.

Earlier this month a dozen Italian surgeons visited the company's premises to learn how its disposable equipment works.

General manager Peter Gibson believes this growth will continue and expects the 65 staff at the company's plant in Strathclyde Business Park to grow to 80 next year.

Avecor Cardiovascular has seen turnover grow from #1m in December 1993 to close to #10m today, and now exports to 15 European countries as well as seven in the Middle East and another seven in the Far East.

The general manager is proud of what he sees taking place as it all began with Cardoimed, a company he formed in 1993 with Sandy Smith, who is now director of production at Avecor.

Mr Gibson founded Cardiomed after he found himself out of work after 30 years selling medical devices in the UK and Japan.

``Honeywell kindly gave us the use of a clean room but in the first nine months our turnover had already reached #1m, and we needed to move to bigger premises,'' he explained.

At this point Avecor Cardiovascular of Minneapolis came along and offered to buy Cardiomed.

The US parent company then financed the construction of a custom-built factory in the new medi-park in Strathclyde Business Park with two 1000 sq ft state-of-the-art clean rooms.

The Scottish company has now established an office in Versailles to tackle the large French market, and Mr Gibson expects to gain large export orders as a result.

Plans are well under way to launch a new product on the market which he believes will lead to further expansion of the Scottish business.

``In open heart surgery as in any surgery it is vitally important that air is not accidently pumped into the brain. We are bringing to the market a new pump which makes it impossible to pump air into the body, and we believe that there will be a huge demand from hospitals for this device.''