Surgical sealants, glues, hemostats from fibrin, cyanoacrylates, bioglues drive $10 billion market

May 4, 2011 - PRLog -- The pace of development of products for wound sealing, closure, hemostasis and anti-adhesion has not slowed despite the extent to which these products have deeply penetrated the clinical caseload in the management of traumatic and surgical wounds.  Traditional wound closure methods, including sutures, clips and tapes, have been steadily either displaced or augmented by biologically and chemically-derived formulations that produce more rapid healing, less scarring, less blood loss, less infection and fewer complications.  MedMarket Diligence details the associated products, technologies, companies and global market in its report, "Worldwide Surgical Sealants, Glues, Wound Closure and Anti-Adhesion Markets, 2008-2015."

"The use of fibrin and other biologically derived sealants and glues was initially impeded in the U.S. by regulatory concerns of viral transmission from blood-derived products, resulting in a market that was more dominant outside the U.S., but once that technical and regulatory hurdle was crossed, the market and its development was blown wide open," says Patrick Driscoll, President of MedMarket Diligence. Now, according to Driscoll, there are well over a hundred active companies worldwide developing and marketing products with remarkably varied sources, formulations and delivery.  This diversity of products has accelerated their uptake by clinicians seeking to both simplify the wound management process and optimize the outcomes by minimizing blood loss, providing stronger wound closure, reducing scarring, reducing infection and more rapidly restoring the structural and functional role of patient tissues.

The breadth of wound closure products of course encompasses traditional wound closure based on mechanical closure, non-resorbable sutures, resorbable sutures, staples, clips and other types, as well as surgical tapes. While this category of products is undergoing a siege from biologically and chemically based closure products, the traditional wound closure types are seeing continued product development focused on improving outcomes and otherwise competing more effectively against emerging wound closure technologies.  Due to their well established use in clinical practice, and due to the value of adjunctive use of these products with emerging products, this category remains the largest share of the wound closure and securement market.

Hemostats are now formulated from thrombin, gelatin, collagen, fibrin, synthetic and other types by literally dozens of companies.  

Surgical sealants are derived from fibrin, synthetics, biopolymers, device-based and other types.  These products represent the fastest-growing segment of the wound closure and securement market.

High strength medical and surgical glues and adhesives are, in principle, designed to achieve wound closure with little or no dependence on sutures, staples or other mechanical closure.  Predicated on cyanoacrylate-type formulations, these products often have the advantage of stronger closure offset by toxicity, which has been the subject of aggressive development efforts.  As a result of the successes that have been achieved in development and clinical acceptance, these products are demonstrating market growth that is second only to fibrin sealants.

Anti-adhesion (i.e., the prevention of post-surgical adhesions), seemingly the antithesis to surgical sealants and glues, can in fact be addressed by different formulations of products otherwise used for wound sealing, in addition by hyaluronic acids, biopolymers and other products specifically formulated to prevent tissue adhesion. Given the overlapping development of technologies and participating companies, this segment is a natural complement to consideration of wound closure products and technologies.

The MedMarket Diligence report #S180, detailed at http://www.mediligence.com/rpt/rpt-s180.htm details the complete range of wound securement technologies used in traumatic, surgical and other wound closure, from tapes, sutures and staples to hemostats, fibrin sealants/glues and medical adhesives. The report details current clinical and technology developments in this huge and rapidly growing worldwide market, with data on products in development and on the market; market size and forecast; competitor market shares; competitor profiles; and market opportunity.

The report is a market and technology assessment and forecast of surgical sealants, glues, hemostasis, other wound closure and anti-adhesion. The report details the current and emerging products, technologies and markets involved in wound closure and sealing using sutures and staples, tapes, hemostats, fibrin and sealant products, medical adhesives and products to prevent surgical adhesions. With full year actual data from 2009 and, for many companies, two quarters of actual data from 2010, the report provides a worldwide forecast to 2015 of the markets for these technologies, with particular emphasis on the market impact of new technologies through the coming decade.  The report provides specific forecasts and shares of the worldwide market by segment for the U.S., Europe (United Kingdom, German, France, Italy, BeNeLux), Latin America, Japan, Korea and Rest of World.

The report provides background data on the surgical, disease and traumatic wound patient populations targeted by current technologies and those under development, and the current clinical practices in the management of these patients, including the dynamics among the various clinical specialties or subspecialties vying for patient population and facilitating or limiting the growth of technologies.

The report establishes the current worldwide market size for major technology segments as a baseline for and projecting growth in the market over a five-year forecast. The report also assesses and projects the composition of the market as technologies gain or lose relative market performance over this period.

The report may be purchased for immediate download via http://www.mediligence.com/store/page41.html or may be purchased by order form at https://www.mediligence.com/order_forms/s180_order.pdf.

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MedMarket Diligence provides data and insight to the medical products, investment and other industries on advanced medical technologies through focused medical technology market and assessment Reports and the Medtech Startups Database.