The words strike fear into nearly every patient: "You'll need surgery."
A few years ago, a seemingly routine procedure, such as removing a gall bladder meant a three- or four-day hospital stay coupled with at least a week's recovery time.These days, the procedure is frequently handled on an out-patient basis. There's less trauma to patients, whose recovery time is significantly shortened. The noninvasive procedure is less costly.
The use of noninvasive surgical procedures also is growing because of advances in technology that make the procedures possible. One of the companies involved is Salt Lake City's OEC Medical Systems Inc., the third-largest medical X-ray equipment company in the United States.
The company develops, manufactures and distributes high-performance, mobile, digital X-ray C-arm imaging systems. OEC's mobile C-arm products are used by surgical teams as real-time imaging devices during a number of procedures.
The systems enable doctors to X-ray patients as they perform procedures and receive "real time" information on a video screen that later may be stored on disc. The X-ray technology enables surgeons to check their work as the operation proceeds.
Using contrasting dyes visible under X-ray, a vascular surgeon repairing an artery damaged by gunfire can ascertain while the patient is on the operating table whether the wound has been properly repaired.
Without the instantaneous feedback, the surgeon would be forced to wait, gloved and gowned in the operating room, as an X-ray technician shoots slides of the injury, develops film and returns it to the operating room where it would be examined on a light box.
Nationwide, OEC has gained about 55 percent of the domestic market share in the mobile C-arm market, competing against giants General Electric, Siemens, Phillips and Liebel-Flarsheim.
In 1987 the company introduced urology tables, which are the only urological X-ray tables with integrated digital image processing. The systems provide digitally enhanced, high quality, real-time images while subjecting the patient to low radiation.
The company was founded in Warsaw, Ind., in 1946 as Orthopaedic Equipment Co. as a medical equipment company manufacturing and selling splints, bone screws, plates and crutches.
OEC entered the X-ray market in 1972 with its pioneering mobile C-arm, which at that time was geared toward the orthopedic surgeon. The C-arm is now used by physicians in every specialty of medicine.
The company opened shop in the Salt Lake International Center in 1978, where the components of its equipment are assembled. Except for the "carcasses" of the X-ray equipment, which are machined to exacting standards at OEC's Indiana plant, the imaging systems are put together in Salt Lake City and shipped worldwide.
When OEC Medical Systems develops new products, it forms teams for the duration of the process. The teams comprise employees ranging from engineers to marketing representatives.
"What it gives us is normally a much better product because everyone has had their say since Day 1 and a product that comes out in half the time," said David Rose, president and chief executive officer. That, of course, saves money.
OEC is basically a turn-key operation, producing nearly every component of its products from circuit boards to the imaging systems.
"We do it for the reliability. We need 99 percent up time," said Larry Harrawood, OEC's vice president of marketing.
The products then undergo rigorous testing before they are shipped to customers.
"We're looking for premature failures that would occur in the first three to six months," Rose said. Harrawood added: "The idea is, we don't want the boards to fail during a surgery."
OEC has quality check systems throughout the manufacturing process. When workers "stuff" the electronic and computer circuitry into the machinery carcasses, their work is checked at each step of the manufacturing process.
"This is why we own the market share against the giants. Our stuff is very good. It doesn't break," Harrawood said.
Although its products own an impressive share of the domestic medical products market, Rose foresees vast growth internationally.
The company employs about 585 people - 350 locally, 90 in Indiana, 18 in Europe, 79 in service nationwide and the remainder in sales.
In September, Salt Lake City became OEC's headquarters. The company was previously known as OEC-Diasonics and was part of Diasonics Inc., headquartered in Milpitas, Calif.
In September, shareholders of Diasonics Inc. approved a corporate restructuring into three separate publicly traded companies: Diasonics Ultrasound Inc. and Focal Surgery Inc. were spun out to company shareholders, and OEC-Diasonics merged into the parent company and was renamed OEC Medical Systems.
The $100 million company's stock is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol OEC Md.