Spotlight On Latin America: Regional Transition Brings Big Opportunities For Medical Device Manufacturers

Article preview from Medtech Insight - January 30, 2013

Latin America’s 30-year transition toward urbanization and economic growth has opened up a huge opportunity for medical device companies to provide treatment solutions for the “diseases of affluence” that are now common in the region. Device imports into Latin America totaled nearly $8 billion in 2009 and import growth is expected to remain strong going forward, particularly in Brazil and Mexico. The outlook is particularly positive for the heart and vascular disease markets.

Spotlight On Latin America: Regional Transition Brings Big Opportunities For Medical Device Manufacturers

Article preview from Medtech Insight - January 30, 2013

Over the past three decades, Latin America has experienced a major demographic, epidemiological, and nutritional transition, marked by economic growth, urbanization, and declines in deaths from infant mortality and infectious disease leading to a substantial increase in overall life expectancy. As this shift occurred, however, diseases associated with a more affluent lifestyle began to emerge, a trend that has led to a large regional increase in morbidity and mortality from vascular diseases and stroke. Vascular disease risk factors such as hypertension, high cholesterol, obesity, and diabetes are all on the rise in Latin America, and combined with continuing high rates of tobacco use, contribute to three-quarters of the region’s cardiovascular disease cases today. This upward trend is expected to continue, with mortality due to coronary artery disease and stroke predicted to increase by 145% in Latin America between 1990 and 2020, according to the recently published Clearstate report, “Latin America Surgical Procedure Volume 2011,” distributed exclusively by Medtech Insight/Elsevier Business Intelligence.

As Latin American countries struggle to adapt to and address this shift in medical needs, medical device manufacturers in the cardiovascular space have an opportunity to help them do so while boosting their revenue growth prospects in the process. According to the Clearstate report, ischemic heart disease is expected to be the number-one cause of morbidity and mortality in Latin America by 2020.

 

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Medtech Insight  newsletter provides insights into the technology and market developments (devices, instrumentation, biomaterials, gene therapy, tissue engineering, etc) impacting a wide range of  surgical and non-surgical clinical practices.