Fielding I'm not sure but you may be confusing two different products catheters and stents.
Lets talk about the catheters first as they are actually being sold now throughout the world. What is a catheter?
A catheter is a tube inserted into the body to install or remove fluids, or to perform minimally-invasive surgery.
American BioMed uses 100% silicone in their catheters. Sales have been rising. Increased interest in these products has been evidenced by the growing number of distributors being signed in the last few months. It can also be seen in the rise in fourth quarter revenues that were reported just a few weeks ago.
American BioMed competes with lots of companies in the catheter business but the big gun in the industry is still Baxter International. Personally I think Baxter International is getting a bit nervous because they have no silicone catheter line of their own. Their catheters are made of latex and latex allergies are being seen more often than ever these days.
In fact latex allergies are so common that the FDA will soon require that warning labels be placed on all latex products.
American BioMed's catheters have other advantages over latex as well.
Latex balloons can fragment when they break on inflation. This never happens with American BioMed's catheters. If they break and this happens with much less frequency than with a latex catheter you will never see a piece of silicone fragment off and get caught in the bloodstream.
American BioMed's catheters have a symmetrical design that does not degrade like latex. Latex catheters are formed separately and the balloon portion must be attached with sutures and or glue. American BioMed's balloons are an integral part of the 100% non allergenic silicone catheter.
What about the stents and Nitinol?
I think Sri handled that very well in his post but in case there is anyone out there reading who needs a bit more information I'll take a stab at it.
First we need to start with what is a stent?
A stent is a medical device designed to provide support for a weakened
blood vessel. They are most commonly used in an area of stenosis(narrowing, constriction of artery). A catheter is used to deliver a stent to it's desired location.
American BioMed will be using Nitinol a memory metal that will expand as desired to help hold open the constricted area in the blood vessel.
Why might we consider this significant? Well Arterial Vascular Engineering a company that just earned 64 cents in it's last quarter just bought a company doing the very same thing.
What did AVEI pay? $62 million for a company extremely similar to American BioMed except to me it seems fairly obvious that ABMI has a wider range of products.
World Medical has catheters and some stents in phase II testing.
What about American BioMed?
American BioMed, Inc., including its wholly-owned subsidiary, (the
"Company"), a development stage enterprise, is engaged in the development, manufacture and marketing of medical devices. The Company's primary technology is directed at interventional cardiology, endovascular surgery and minimally invasive surgical devices. The principal products are atherectomy catheters, stents, clot filters, 100% silicone balloon catheters and drug delivery catheter systems. The Company's primary business strategy is to design and develop minimally invasive medical devices to treat atherosclerotic disease. The Company holds patents on its OmniCath(R) atherectomy catheter, a device that mechanically removes the atherosclerotic disease ("plaque") from within blood vessels or other synthetic implanted vessel devices. The Company also has patent and/or proprietary rights to stent devices, the OmniStent(TM) and the OmniFilter, a Catheter-mounted temporary blood filter. These devices are implantable within the vessel of the body to maintain an open lumen allowing necessary rates of blood flow.
Just one more thing before I stop this lengthy post I wanted to leave a URL for a glossary of terms for anyone who needs a little more help understanding the medical terminology.
cdr.stanford.edu
GO ABMI!
Regards, Jeff
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