“In the past 20 years, surgery has been transformed from barbaric laceration and three weeks of recovery to incisionless procedure and the afternoon off.”
—(Report #S190)Sealants, glue, other wound closure and anti-adhesion
Worldwide, the annual market for medical/surgical sealants, glues, hemostasis, wound closure and anti-adhesion is in excess of $15 billion. The largest piece of this market is in sutures and staples, but sales these technologies are flat (other than nominal growth from absorbable sutures). The highest growth area of this market is in high strength medical/surgical adhesives, but these technologies still have a way to go in development and market penetration of sales from sutures/staples. Below is illustrated the segments of the overall wound closure market in their growth (vertical position on the chart) and size (circle size and horizontal position on the chart). See link.
The Coagulation Cascade as Model for Medtech Product Development
The natural clotting process has been used by manufacturers to design new products that can mimic the body’s hemostatic action. Hemostatic products have been developed using collagen and degraded collagen (gelatin) to stimulate the hemostasis cascade. These hemostatic products depend on a cascade of blood factors to initiate and drive the full clotting process; therefore, they tend to be slower-acting than products based on fibrin and thrombin, which act later in the cascade to produce immediate hemostatic results. In addition, synthetic materials (such as Johnson & Johnson/Ethicon’s Surgicel or Medafor’s VitaSure) and some naturally occurring biological polymers (such as calcium alginate and chitosan) have been developed to stimulate the same cascades; companies have recently evolved these simple hemostatic materials to develop hemostasis products that can also seal bleeding tissues.
Approximately 114 million surgical and procedure-based wounds are created annually worldwide that offer potential for use of adjunctive surgical closure and securement products; approximately 36 million of these wounds are created during surgical procedures in the United States.
(For the full analysis, see Report #S190, “Worldwide Surgical Sealants, Glues, Wound Closure and Anti-Adhesion Markets, 2010-2017″.)
