With hundreds of thousands camped out in temporary shelters, at least 10,000 feared dead, more than a million without running water, and many desperately scanning survivor lists to learn the fate of loved ones, the fortunes of the global medical device industry are the last thing on most Japanese minds and rank almost invisibly low on the scale of human importance.

But with the world's third biggest economy and one of the most important markets for medical devices, the devastation wrought by Friday's tsunami and the 9.0 earthquake that triggered it, the biggest in Japan's recorded history, could affect the industry, according to reports.

Already, fears of a catastrophic meltdown of reactors at the Fukushima power plant have caused stocks to plummet, with Tokyo's Nikkei, its version of the S&P 500 list, down by more than 16 percent Tuesday, John Cassidy wrote in his Rational Irrationality column at the New Yorker. "Not that it matters much in the scheme of things, but in the past two days the Japanese stock market has suffered the biggest fall in any major market since the Wall Street crash of October, 1987," he wrote.

And according to Deutsche Bank (as reported by Reuters), Japan accounts for nearly one-tenth of the combined sales of the top dozen U.S. companies.

Edwards Lifescences Corp.'s Japanese sales are 17 percent of total revenue, Boston Scientific Corp.'s are 12 percent, St. Jude Medical Inc.'s 11 percent and Stryker Corp.'s 10 percent, according to Deutsche Bank.

Becton Dickinson, with around 5 to 6 percent of total sales in Japan, has more invested in the country: it runs a syringe manufacturing facility located in Fukushima, the same town that's home to the damaged, and possibly leaking, nuclear power plant. The company told Reuters its factory, outside of the 20-kilometer "exclusion zone" surrounding the power plant, has been shut down, pending a safety assessment. All of its 550 workers, employed in Fukushima and 155 miles to the southeast in Tokyo, are safe, the company said.

CNN reported that AIR Worldwide, a research group, estimates the quake will top Hurricane Katrina as the most expensive natural disaster in history. The 2005 hurricane that washed over New Orleans resulted in losses of around $125 billion, according to CNN.


Want to help?

Relief agencies say what they most need right now is cash. An easy way to make a donation to groups delivering aid on the ground is to text the words "Japan" or "Quake" to 80888 to donate $10 to the Salvation Army. Or text "RedCross" to 90999 to donate $10 to the American Red Cross, which is working with its Japanese counterpart to help survivors.

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