VNUS Closure Procedure to save NHS 'millions'
Released on: September 02, 2011, 11:47 am
Author:
Elodie Morvan
Industry:
Healthcare
As the NHS faces budget restrictions, a non-surgical treatment
for varicose veins (http://www.vnus.co.uk) has the potential to save
the NHS millions of pounds.
Government ministers have promised that frontline services will be protected from
cuts, but the NHS Confederation believes that this is unlikely to be achieved given
the scale of the savings needed.
It estimates that the health service will have to make savings of £20bn over the
next four years, as demand for healthcare continues to grow but increases in funding
come to an end.
It is estimated that the VNUS Closure Procedure could potentially save the NHS £17
million, while helping 7,000 patients avoid further treatment due to failed
alternative methods.
“This procedure has enabled many NHS Trusts throughout the country to take a very
common operation out of the operating theatre and into treatment rooms, helping to
free-up theatres for other cases,” said, Michael Branagan-Harris, Group Manager for
NHS Medical Device Market Access For Innovative Medical Devices.
The VNUS Closure Procedure involves a hospital stay of just a couple of hours,
treatment under local, rather than general anaesthetic, and a much faster recovery
time.
Most patients undergoing a VNUS procedure walk out of the treatment room unaided and
are usually able to return home and resume work within a day, with little or no
pain.

For the NHS, the procedure is also much less resource-intensive
than surgery. Conventional varicose vein stripping is a common operation, taking-up
a great deal of operating theatre time.
For same costs, a further 25,000 patients could be treated earlier and avoid pain,
or discomfort.
As the VNUS Closure procedure can be carried-out in a treatment room, it has the
potential to free-up theatre-time, enabling the NHS to treat other serious
conditions more quickly and so reduce waiting-times.
Contact Details: VNUS United Kingdom
COVIDIEN (UK) Commercial Ltd
154 Fareham Road
Gosport
Hampshire PO13 0AS
TEL: 0800 258 5995
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