For Release: 11-28-2006

Pain-Free Podiatry is Goal of Two Veteran Foot Specialists in Northern Mississippi Using Sorenson Medical's ambIT Infusion Pump

Former U.S. Navy podiatrists—one of them podiatric consultant to the White Houses of Presidents Clinton and Bush—say user-friendly, microchip-controlled pain pump makes civilian foot surgery pain-free and reduces need for their patients to take narcotic painkillers.

OXFORD, Miss. and SALT LAKE CITY (November 28, 2006) — Podiatrists Carey Craig Williams and R. Michael Whitmore of North Mississippi Foot Specialists in Oxford, Mississippi, have taken a step into the high technology future of podiatric surgery—and found it pain free.

Business partners today, the two physicians have a combined 18 years of experience practicing medicine in the U.S. Navy. Williams is the former Chief of Podiatry at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland and was podiatric consultant to the White Houses of Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Both Whitmore and Williams have served as resident directors of podiatric surgery. Their private foot specialty practice in Oxford is five years old.

Decades of training and experience go in to their treatment of nearly every type of lower extremity problem their patients can have—from bunions to reconstructive surgery—and feet are a very sensitive area on which to perform surgery. So, it was good news for the physicians when they discovered a new generation of compact, electronic medical infusion "pain pumps" made by Sorenson Medical in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The state-of-the-art medical infusion pumps, named ambIT®, allow them to perform pain-free surgery on their patients and at the same time to significantly reduce the quantity of narcotic pain relievers necessary.

"One hundred percent of the surgeries in which we use the Sorenson Medical ambIT pump are pain-free," said Williams.

After surgery, the compact ambIT pump—which hangs from a belt pack and runs on two AA batteries—stays with the patient to ensure a comfortable recovery at home. "An important feature of the ambIT pump is that the patient is in control of their own pain medication. If they begin to feel pain, they can press a button on the pump and get more medication," said Williams.

Though technologically sophisticated, the Sorenson Medical ambIT pain pump is "straightforward, user-friendly and easy for the physician to program," said Whitmore. "And we get a record from the pain pump of the amount of medication the patient has used."

An ambIT pain pump works by delivering a constant drip of mild anesthetic directly to the nerves leading to the foot via a precisely placed catheter, or thin tube. So, rather than numb the entire body with narcotics, it bathes specific nerves with a precise amount of local anesthetic, a painkiller similar to, but longer acting than the numbing agent a dentist uses. The steady trickle of anesthetic exactly where needed is much more effective than swallowing pain pills because the painkilling effect of a narcotic pill peaks and wears off, causing pain to come and go. In addition, narcotic pills may cause nausea, vomiting, constipation and drowsiness—and they include a risk of addiction.

The anesthetic technique Sorenson Medical's innovative ambIT pump makes possible is called continuous peripheral nerve block and has been available for a few years but is just now coming in to mainstream use, with physicians like Williams and Whitmore leading the way. In the past, the two physicians had tried other manufacturers' pumps and results were discouraging. "Those older infusion pumps would leak into the patients' dressings, they would malfunction and they had no bolus option [patient-controlled button for extra medication]," said Whitmore.

Keeping the pain level low for their patients has another significant benefit, say the two podiatrists. "All joints tend to stiffen up with surgery, but with this method of pain treatment, patients get their range of motion back sooner," said Whitmore, "so we can get them back to work and back in to normal shoe gear earlier."

"If I were to have surgery myself," said Williams, "I would definitely specify that the surgeon use a Sorenson Medical ambIT pain pump."

About Sorenson Medical
Sorenson Medical (www.sorensonmedical.com) designs and manufactures a line of innovative ambulatory infusion pumps that provide precise delivery of medication for clinical applications, including: acute postoperative pain, long-term chronic pain, chemotherapies, extended infection therapies, etc. The ambIT® line of ambulatory infusion pumps is on the leading edge of a medical trend toward lightweight portable infusion devices, which enable patients to receive drug therapy safely in the comfort of their homes. These devices make it possible for patients to return home sooner without compromising their quality of care, enabling hospitals to reduce costs. The Sorenson Medical line of ambIT® infusion pumps are also easy for surgeons and other physicians to use, with programming that is simple and intuitive. Sorenson Medical is FDA registered and is certified to ISO 13485: 2003. Sorenson Medical's products are CE marked (European Conformity) for distribution in the European Union (EU) and European Economic Area (EEA), and have been approved by the Chinese FDA for distribution throughout the Peoples Republic of China.