A medical device maker hoping to drive down the use of narcotics and improve postoperative recovery with disposable pain pumps is hoping to raise $6.75 million, according to two recent U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
Indianapolis-based Symbios Medical Products develops, manufactures and markets portable, disposable pain pumps that attach to catheters to deliver non-narcotic pain medication to a specific area of the body below the neck.
Its flagship product, GOPump, is small enough to be worn on a belt and is used to deliver local anesthetic to an incision site for several days after surgery. Its follow-on product, the GOBlock, is a peripheral nerve block pump that can provide anesthesia for up to six days without any physician interference after the initial setup. Patients and physicians can observe the progress of infusion through the transparent shell of the pump.
In late 2010, the company was selling about 6,000 pumps a year, according to President Herb Senft in an article from the Indianapolis Business Journal, but with the help of a distribution partner B Braun, it was hoping to scale up to 65,000 units this year. A company rep declined an interview for this story.
Although pain pumps are currently used in only a small fraction of the surgeries performed, Symbios’ products have the potential to be used in as many as 20 million surgical procedures in the U.S. each year, according to One Med Place. Most often patients experiencing postoperative pain are prescribed narcotics, which can cause side effects like dizziness, drowsiness, nausea and constipation. Symbios says its pumps reduce and sometimes eliminates the need for narcotics.
The postoperative pain relief segment comprised one-fifth of the total global pain management market in 2010 and is one of the big segment’s driving growth, according to a GBI Research market report. Global sales of postoperative pain therapeutics totaled $5.9 billion in 2010. I-Flow Corp., Ambu and Moog make similar disposable pain pump products.
Existing investors in Symbios include Main Street Venture Fund, Elevate Ventures and Hopewell Ventures.
