Rick,
Thank you! You really shouldn't have; it's past Christmas and my birthday is not till July :-)
This seals it for me. I don't believe these studies were fudged and they give p values that're low enough that the sample size must have been substantial.
The only figure I don't see in the abstract - and it could be in the full one; I'd have to look - is a comparison of the number of patients in the ADCON-L group who required reoperation versus the number of patients in the control group who required reoperation. I know this has been studied separately, but I like each study to be complete.
I don't see how anyone can argue with these numbers. It's *very* clear that Gliatech has been focusing on the right area here. These are the sorts of numbers that insurers need to see.
I see only one fly in the ointment - no pun intended - here. There's no statement to the effect that the ADCON-L group remained in the hospital for less time than the control group. All it says is that they returned to work 3.6 days earlier. Unfortunately, it's generally health insurance that pays for the operation, the time in the hospotal and the medication while it's workman's compensation, private disability of the employer who pays for the work time missed. So the problem is somewhat compounded by having two different insurance groups with conflicting interests who have to pay. The health insurance does not particularly care about the number of work days missed. All they care about is minimizing the time in the hospital, the operations costs and the drug costs. They'd also care about the duration of the repeat surgeries and the time spent in the hospital there.
I also have to question the accuracy of the final statement that annual savings to the health care system would exceed $500M. My guess is that a portion of that amount comes from lost work and that's not covered by the health care system. But the employer or workman's compensation *does* cover it and they're the ones who determine which insurance carrier to go with.
I have the entire paper; I got it in a package from Adam Grierly on Thursday, but I haven't had time to read it. After Rick sent this note, I dug it out. It turns out that this paper is in a supplement to Neurological Research. It's a special supplement covering Epidural Fibrosis. And guess what? One quick scan through the table of contents show that out of 12 papers, 4 are ADCON-L studies and they all appear positive. That's *impressive* and it puts this whole Stephens/Techvest idiocy in a proper perspective.
V1, forget $16/share for the rights to ADCON. It's far too low. In a couple of years, ADCON-L could easily achieve a market penetration of 50%. As I recall, they're only at 13% or so now. So we're talking about a revenue growth rate of about 100% per year for two years based solely on ADCON-L. And then ADCON-P should kick in.
Yeah, I'm long so I'm biased. Yet I'm also suspicious and if I could find a major negative, I'd lighten up my holdings of GLIA *fast*. The problem is that I *can't* find any. Everytime I go looking for a negative, I end up finding a positive and buying more shares!
Thanks, Torben
P.S. I'm going to review the whole paper and if I find anything interesting, I'll try to summarize. I already checked and there's an explanation of the $500M number in the full paper.
P.P.S. Rick, I really appreciate your tremendous help on this one. |
