The San Antonio Express-News  www.mySA.com:Business has an article this morning about KCI's lawsuit against Smith & Nephew over its patents for the wound VAC.

It represents a big win for the San Antonio based company. The monetary amount was not large - $1 million for KCI and just shy of $200k for Wake Forest University, which licenses the patents to KCI. 

what it means though is that the company has protected its intellectual property surrounding the Wound Vac and its foam dressing. 

Smith & Nephew will, of course, appeal the decision.

Personally I have not been very happy with the apparent clinical benefit of negative pressure with a gauze, non-foam dressing.

Recently I had two patients with ulcers, one leg and one foot and heel, that had the negative pressure dressing prescribed upon discharge from the hospital and for insurance benefit reasons the patients had to have the  gauze, non-foam dressing.  Both patients ulcers became larger and only started to improve once the gauze, non-foam dressing negative pressure device was removed.

My two cents.

Karr 

I'm a big fan of KCI wound VAC. I've been using it for the most part of its 10-plus years in existence, and I have saved many limbs and lives thanks to VAC.

I believe the sales pitch of these non-KCI devices is, they are slightly cheaper for the SNFs to use. To my knowledge, none of the competing products have shown clinically to be comparable or superior to the KCI VAC device.

Now, why should we use non-KCI NWPT device, so that I can save a little bit of money for the SNFs? Just food for thought....