September 21, 2007 — Results of a multi-hospital study, presented at the 47th Annual Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents & Chemotherapy (September 17 – 20, 2007), demonstrated that a nanotechnology-based medical device is responsible for reducing surgical site infection rates by more than 50% and for significantly shortening hospital stays when compared with traditional narcotic pain care. These results indicate that ON-Q PainBuster with ON-Q SilverSoaker Antimicrobial Catheter from I-Flow Corp. may have the potential to save hospitals billions of dollars if used for post-surgical pain relief across multiple surgeries.

The infection prevention capability of the system is enhanced by the ON-Q SilverSoaker catheter that is treated with an antimicrobial silver agent in nanotechnology form and has been shown in in-vitro testing to be 99.9% effective in decreasing bacteria and fungus commonly associated with hospital-acquired infections.

The study was conducted at 14 U.S. surgical sites. It measured site infection rates 30 days after surgery and length of stay for 289 patients. Colorectal surgery was chosen for the study because it is the most infection-prone surgery in most hospitals. Patients were randomized to receive either continuous infusion of local anesthetic using ON-Q or traditional narcotic pain management. Results showed that the ON-Q patients were 55% less likely to develop a surgical site infection when compared to the control group (6.6% versus 14.6%). The patient’s average length of stay dropped to 6.1 days for ON-Q patients from 8.4 days for the control group. In addition, when patients are treated with ON-Q, they often do not experience the immune-suppressive response of narcotics, which can essentially weaken patients and make it more difficult for their bodies to fight an infection.