MEDOS :: Enterprise


	24h-VAD-Hotline - 7 days Call: +49(0)700-66669966


	Contact Details Customer Service: +49(0)2402-9664-15 /-52 Fax: +49(0)241-4301999912 Switch Board: +49(0)2402-9664-0 Fax: +49(0)241-4301999912


	Press Reports


	Convention, Fair and Exhibit Appointments Dates at a glance!


	1^st June 2008 - Quality and Safety first New shipping modalities introduced

Enterprise

Since its foundation in 1987 by Karl Heinz Hildinger the MEDOS Medizintechnik AG has expanded steadily in the course of radical progress in medicine technology.

The first plant location, with focus on heart surgery, was opened in 1990 in Aachen (Germany). In 1994 Medos moved into its newly opened facility in Stolberg (Germany). The initial distribution company with its main focus on tubing sets had turned into a middle-class high tech medicine technology enterprise with a worldwide distribution.

Beside the production plant in Stolberg near Aachen (Germany) MEDOS Medizintechnik AG owns another location in Radeberg near Dresden (Germany). The acquisition of Gish Biomedical, Inc. in California (USA) in 2007 and of Life Systems Medizintechnik-Service GmbH in Hamburg (Germany) in 2008 complete the present commercial net of the MEDOS Medizintechnik AG.

The MEDOS Medizintechnik AG products as well as its research and development have its roots in Stolberg (Germany). By now, the whole MEDOS product spectrum is based on former foundation stones, such as the MEDOS Tubing Sets and various own developments, the HILITE^® oxygenators and reservoirs, the RHEOPARIN^® coating (Heparin), the DELTASTREAM^® series, the MEDOS VAD-System with various ventricles and cannulae, and a comprehensive MEDOS Cannulae Program.

Most German heart centres are looked after by the MEDOS own distribution. The distribution of MEDOS products and customer service in France is performed by a daughters enterprise, MEDOS France, in all other countries by an extensive distribution network with partners, who have specialized in the field of product distribution for heart surgery.

Market

Degenerative cardiovasvular diseases are by far the major death cause in the Western world. In USA 40 % of all deaths are cause of this indication. More people are dying there from degenerative cardiovascular diseases than from the 7 following described death causes put together.

The "World Health Organization" WHO estimate, that because of increasing industrialization and the thus caused altered habits such as lack of exercise, poor diets and smoking, degenerative cardiovascular diseases will be death cause No.1 worldwide in 2010.

At the final stage of a cardiovascular disease treatment, heart surgery is generally performed with the heart-lung-machine (HLM). Only by using the HLM is surgery made possible. The HLM basically exists of a compact roller pump and steering unit in which a tubing system is inserted. Function elements such as an artificial lung (oxygenator), roller pump tubing, reservoir and filter are integrated in the system. The complete tubing system with function elements is only used with one application.

In 2004 the total number of heart surgeries in Germany amounted to approximately 146,100, in about 80 heart-surgical centres, more than 71,000 coronary-surgical interventions (bypass-operations) and just 18,570 heart flaps-operations were carried out. The share of heart surgery with a heart lung machine ranges around 96,000 applications. Worldwide, approximately 1,000,000 cases are performed with the assistance of a heart lung machine (HLM), trend rising.

In some cases the patient cannot be weaned off the HLM or the time till transplant has to be bridged. In such a case, the so called heart-assist-device , in short VAD system, is used. The VAD system is usually used on a temporary base, meaning that it is connected to the patient for a period of several days and weeks.

The final life saving option for a patient suffering from severe heart disease is a heart transplant. Alone 20,000 to 40,000 patients, who are living in the USA, are waiting for a donor heart. Fact is though, that only 4,500 heart transplants were performed in the USA and Europe in the year 2000. In Germany just 1,000 donor hearts are required per year, but in 2004 the number of transplanted hearts was less than 400. Estimates on the worldwide demand for donor hearts range from 50,000 to 300,000 per year. The demand for donor hearts stands in striking contrast to the amount of available donor hearts or corresponding alternatives.

Heart surgery, as a last step during treatment of degenerative cardiovascular diseases, will gain importance also in the Western world. Methods of treatment in the pharmaceutical- as well as cardiologic range, which are already established or have been newly introduced, can at best stop the course of disease, but in most cases will only slow it down. The increasing aging structure of the Western population will be tied up to a patient collective, which will be unequally difficult to operate. The demands on the surgeons ability, as well as on the device technique that is made available to him, will increase.