Healthcare Industry News: Wright Medical Group
News Release - June 8, 2010
Wright Medical Group, Inc. Announces Global Commercial Launch of the XPANSION(R) Micrografting System for Less Traumatic Split-Thickness Skin Grafting
Novel XPANSION® Instrumentation Increases the Accessibility of Skin-Grafting Treatment to Patients Suffering from Chronic and Acute WoundsARLINGTON, Tenn.--(HSMN NewsFeed)--Wright Medical Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: WMGI ), a global orthopaedic medical device company, announced today the commercial launch of the XPANSION® Micrografting System for split-thickness skin grafting via a minimized donor site. The XPANSION® System is a single-use disposable instrument kit for harvesting, expanding, and applying split-thickness skin micro-autografts for the treatment of chronic and acute wounds. The instruments were invented by Elof Eriksson, M.D., Ph.D., Chief of Plastic Surgery at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA, and Professor at Harvard Medical School.
The current standard of care for skin grafting procedures is usually performed in the operating room under general anesthesia. Conventional techniques employ the use of a powered cutting blade or “dermatome,” which can result in a large, painful donor site. The XPANSION® System provides the effectiveness of conventional auto-grafting techniques, but in an outpatient setting. The unique ability to “micro-morselize” a very small skin graft with the proprietary XPANSION® System delivers wound site coverage of up to 100 times the size of the donor site graft. This compares with only 9-10 times the size of the donor graft with the conventional dermatome techniques. Thus, the benefits of “micrografting” include exponentially greater wound coverage with reduced patient morbidity, delivered at a lower-cost facility setting.
David G. Armstrong, D.P.M., M.D., Ph.D., Professor of Surgery, and director of the Southern Arizona Limb Salvage Alliance (SALSA) at the University of Arizona stated, “The XPANSION® System allows for a very small harvest site which has resulted in minimal morbidity for my patients, allowing these procedures to frequently be performed in the clinic under local anesthesia. In addition, the XPANSION® System enables major increases in intra-operative expansion ratios without sacrificing time to healing or quality of the repair. As a result, we believe the XPANSION® System may have potentially limb and life-saving implications in the treatment of large traumatic and burn wounds where donor skin may be limited.”
It is estimated that over 215,000 split thickness skin grafting procedures are performed annually in the U.S. The XPANSION® System could greatly broaden surgeon and patient access to the procedure, and may ultimately increase the number of skin grafting procedures performed due to simplicity of use versus traditional techniques.
Eric E. Gay, Sr. Director of Wright’s Biologics Marketing team, commented, “The XPANSION® Micrografting System could prove to be an enabling technology for our surgical podiatry customers, who treat the vast majority of chronic diabetic foot problems. Additionally, we believe the XPANSION® System to be a complementary modality to our GRAFTJACKET® Matrix, enhancing the chronic wound product offering of our 150+ specialized Foot and Ankle sales representatives.”
The XPANSION® System is the latest addition to Wright’s biologics product line for foot and ankle surgery which includes GRAFTJACKET® Regenerative Tissue Matrix, BIOTAPE XM® Reinforcement Matrix, PRO-DENSE® Injectable Regenerative Graft, PRO-STIM™ Injectable Osteo-Inductive Graft, the ALLOMATRIX® line of demineralized bone matrix putties, and the ALLO-PURE® and CANCELLO-PURE® lines of foot and ankle bone wedges.
Wright Medical Group, Inc. is a global orthopaedic medical device company and a leading provider of surgical solutions for the foot and ankle market. The Company specializes in the design, manufacture and marketing of devices and biologic products for extremity, hip and knee repair and reconstruction. The Company has been in business for 60 years and markets its products in over 60 countries worldwide. For more information about Wright Medical, visit the Company’s website at www.wmt.com.
This press release contains “forward-looking statements” as defined under U.S. federal securities laws. These statements reflect management’s current knowledge, assumptions, beliefs, estimates, and expectations and express management’s current views of future performance, results, and trends and may be identified by their use of terms such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “plan,” “predict,” “project,” “will,” and other similar terms. Forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to materially differ from those described in the forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include those discussed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (including those described in Item 1A of our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2009, under the heading, “Risk Factors”). Readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Such statements are made as of the date of this press release, and we undertake no obligation to update such statements after this date.
Source: Wright Medical Group
Issuer of this News Release is solely responsible for its
content.
Please address inquiries directly to the issuing company.
