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There are over 1 million patients with non-healing leg ulcers each year inthe US. That number is growing along with the aging of the population. Ithas been estimated that the average total cost of care to manage a non-healingleg ulcer is roughly $10,000. Costs can increase dramatically if surgicalinterventions are required. Dr. Regulski's study looked at 8 patients he hadbeen treating that had non-healing venous leg ulcers. All patients had beenmanaged with multi-layer compression along with another advanced wound caredressing to cover the wound. The study design had a typical 12-weekevaluation period, standard in protocols that look to quantify the complete100% healing rate. The same multi-layer compression was continued, but thewound dressing covering the wound was changed to MEDIHONEY. After only6 weeks, five of the wounds had completely closed, and the other three woundsaveraged 75% closure by the end of the study period. This resulted in acombined 91.4% closure rate. Additional endpoints quantified during the studyincluded:
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About the product's recognition at the APWCA, CEO Edward Quilty said,"Venous leg ulcers can be some of the most difficult to manage. Although 50%heal with standard multi-layer compression therapy, it is the other 50% thatmake the quality of life so poor for patients with this type of ulcer. Weknew from Georgina Gethin's large-scale randomized controlled study presentedlast year that the use of Active Leptospermum Honey helped to increase thehealing rate of these otherwise non-healing leg ulcers, and we sought to do aconfirmatory case series study when we launched MEDIHONEY last fall. Dr.Regulski's study is impressive and compares very favorably to other caseseries of 8-12 non-healing leg ulcer patients managed with other products.Indeed, as is the case with any new product introduced into the wound caremarket, clinicians first put the dressings on their toughest hard-to-healwounds, and the majority of MEDIHONEY used so far has been on thesenon-healing leg ulcers. This is exciting to us for two reasons: First, webelieve that the reputation MEDIHONEY is garnering out in the field for itseffectiveness on non-healing leg ulcers is helping to position the product asfirst-line for this type of ulcer by the clinicians that have used thedressing. As word spreads and as we increase our sales force, the productstands a good chance of widespread adoption for the management of non-healingleg ulcers. Secondly, since this type of wound is third in incidence withinthe big three ulcer types -- behind pressure ulcers and diabetic foot ulcers-- we have good reason to believe that our initial strong sales are onlyscratching the surface of what we will be able to achieve with MEDIHONEY. Wehave larger cohort studies planned for both diabetic foot ulcers and pressureulcers, and based on the evidence we have seen thus far to date on these typesof ulcers, we are confident that we will see similar movement towardsfirst-line positioning in the mana
