Cardium Reports Non-Healing Wounds Continue to Challenge Patients and Healthcare...( ...),Health

SAN DIEGO, Aug. 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Cardium Therapeutics (NYSE Amex: CXM) today reported that a recent medical journal article highlights the challenges facing healthcare providers with respect to finding optimal treatments for patients with non-healing wounds.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20051018/CARDIUMLOGO)

As reported in the Journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants, (JAAPA, August 2009), chronic wounds affect an estimated 5.7 million patients in the U.S. and cost the healthcare system approximately $20 billion annually. The article's author further notes that optimal wound care requires a portfolio of treatments including the only FDA-approved protein-based topical gel Regranex(R) (becaplermin), bioengineered skin substitutes, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, and subatmospheric wound therapy (also known as negative-pressure wound therapy), as well as institutional support from the growing number of nationwide wound-care centers that offer specialized, multidisciplinary approaches to the treatment of chronic wounds. The author also reports that the cost of treating non-healing ulcers of longer than one year's duration is estimated to range from approximately $20,000 to $27,000, based on the level of advanced care.

As reported in the International Wound Journal, (December, 2007) "one of the most feared complications of diabetes is the lower extremity amputation." Other studies report that diabetes is the leading cause of nontraumatic lower extremity amputations in the U.S., amounting to greater than 75,000 per year or over 200 per day. Limb amputation occurs 10 to 30 times more often in a
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