Laura Miller's January 2012 report about the current status of Orthopedic and Spine Device companies published at the "Becker's Ortho & Spine Review journal provides an interesting birds eye view on medical device sales, marketing and growth trend among the well known device companies.
[It is not a full analysis or review report, but a compilation of 10 companies and short two liner financial results] Though, Neurophysiologists or Intraoperative Neuromonitoring has got nothing to do with these companies directly, the general trend in what is happening at these medical devices provide a background knowledge about "the actual trend in Ortho and Spine surgeries", such as the number of surgical procedures done, trend in increase or decrease of such procedures around US and internationally, and also the trend in usage of such devices and systems by many surgeons across a spectrum of Ortho and spine surgeries. It is also important to note that not all surgical procedures involve devices from these companies where an IONM is sought by the surgeons.
The report took for consideration of the quarterly financial outlooks of Top 10 Medical device companies that are in the Ortho and Spine field and briefly summarizes their sales, revenues and marketing growth (mostly 2Q or 3Q, as I did not notice any 4Q results in that summary report?). Almost all the top 10 companies except Medtronic and Synthese' showed anywhere between 1.5%-10% decrease in sales and growth, most reported International growth seems to better for most of them. But, the overall trend for the year 2011, decrease in growth due to one or other reasons being either litigation settlements or lack of capturing enough marketing of their products to decrease in usage of their devices....etc...
Does this means the over all number of surgical procedures that are predicted to go up multifold is not happening or is it simply has to do with the surgeons are avoiding usage of medical devices in their surgical procedures?. Are the patients avoiding Ortho and Spine surgeries, it could be any of these?, but interesting to note until we see more reports and analysis in details.
I am not posting the whole article but the first paragraph and a Link,(click the word Link) feel free to visit the Becker's page.
10 Orthopedic & Spine Device Company Financial Reports
Written by Laura Miller | January 20, 2012
Here are 10 orthopedic and spine device company financial reports. ArthroCare reported $83.3 million during 3Q, a 3.7 percent decrease from the same period last year. The company's worldwide sports medicine sales experienced a 1.6 percent increase.
Biomet experienced a 4 percent increase in net sales during 2Q of the 2012 fiscal year, despite a 5 percent drop in worldwide spine sales. This comes after a 10 percent drop in spine sales during 1Q of FY 2012.
