Smith & Nephew Negative Pressure Wound Therapy Products To Be Available To Patients Through the Medicare Part B Competitive Biddi...( ST. PETERSBURG Fla. June 2 /- The...),Health

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., June 2 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The Advanced Wound Management Division of Smith & Nephew (LSE: SN; NYSE: SNN) announced today that its negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) products will be available in nine of the ten designated metropolitan areas included in the first phase of the competitive bidding program administered by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in the U.S. The program, which is scheduled to take effect in July 2008, was established, in part, to ensure that Medicare patients have access to quality homecare products and services and that these and their providers meet Medicare's new financial and quality standards.

The Smith & Nephew EZCARE(TM) system for in-hospital use and the V1STA(TM) portable system for home use are proven treatments for hard to heal wounds based on the well-established principles of negative pressure wound therapy. The benefits of this treatment have been demonstrated since the late 1800s. The Smith & Nephew systems are FDA-cleared and have demonstrated excellent clinical results at a lower pressure than commonly used in other NPWT technologies. This lower pressure is comfortable for the patient and can improve usage rates for the treatment in the homecare environment. The clinical effectiveness of the Chariker-Jeter(TM) technique on which the Smith & Nephew NPWT dressing system is based was documented and published in 1989(1). Recent clinical research, published in the June edition of International Wound Journal and that will be presented at the 2008 World Union of Wound Healing Societies meeting in Toronto, Canada, concludes that the Smith & Nephew gauze-based NPWT systems are clinically effective with statistically significant reduction in wound volume and wound area similar to those published for foam-based NPWT systems(2).

To help ensure that homecare patients have access to clinically-proven NPWT, Smith & Nephew recently announced that it has entered into a pref
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