CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--InVivo Therapeutics Holdings Corp. (NVIV) today announced the publication of an article titled “Relationship of American Spinal Injury Association Impairment Scale Grade to Post-injury Hospitalization and Costs in Thoracic Spinal Cord Injury” in the journal Neurosurgery. Neurosurgery is the official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. The article estimates the lifetime economic costs associated with hospitalizations in relation to American Spinal Injury Association Impairment Scale (AIS) grade. AIS grades are widely-used measures of spinal cord injury (SCI) severity that range from AIS A (complete) to AIS E (normal). The article concludes that patients with less severe thoracic SCI, as reflected in AIS grade, spend fewer days hospitalized over their lifetimes, leading to lower costs of inpatient care. Therefore, therapies improving AIS grade following thoracic SCI may provide cost savings in addition to addressing substantial unmet need.
Specifically, the article reports a lifetime net present value cost savings of about $72,000 for patients with thoracic AIS B SCI as compared to patients with thoracic AIS A SCI, and of about $132,500 for patients with thoracic AIS C SCI as compared to patients with thoracic AIS A SCI.
Dr. Steven Kirshblum, Director of the Spinal Cord Injury Program at the Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation and one of the authors of the article, said “This article is a valuable contribution to the literature regarding the economic burden of spinal cord injury. This is one of the first articles to evaluate a key component of long-term treatment cost by AIS grade and level of injury and establishes that improvement in AIS grade may be associated with cost savings.”
“We are very pleased to have our first publication regarding the financial burden of illness of spinal cord injury and the potential economic impact of patients converting to less severe AIS grade,” Mark Perrin, InVivo’s CEO and Chairman, said. “This publication focuses on the re-hospitalization costs associated with patients with different AIS grades, but there are also many other direct healthcare costs and indirect costs, such as lost wages, associated with SCI. In the future, we plan to continue to evaluate the burden of illness by AIS grade and to publish additional findings. As we work to complete the INSPIRE study of the Neuro-Spinal Scaffold™, we anticipate that these publications will serve as foundational components of our commercial launch strategy.”
The publication is now available electronically through Neurosurgery prior to print publication at: https://doi.org/10.1093/neuros/nyx425.
About InVivo Therapeutics
InVivo Therapeutics Holdings Corp. is a clinical-stage biomaterials and biotechnology company with a focus on treatment of spinal cord injuries. The company was founded in 2005 with proprietary technology co-invented by Robert Langer, Sc.D., Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Joseph P. Vacanti, M.D., who then was at Boston Children’s Hospital and who now is affiliated with Massachusetts General Hospital. In 2011, the company earned the David S. Apple Award from the American Spinal Injury Association for its outstanding contribution to spinal cord injury medicine. In 2015, the company’s investigational Neuro-Spinal Scaffold™ received the 2015 Becker’s Healthcare Spine Device Award. The publicly-traded company is headquartered in Cambridge, MA. For more details, visit www.invivotherapeutics.com.
Safe Harbor Statement
Any statements contained in this press release that do not describe historical facts may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These statements can be identified by words such as "believe," "anticipate," "intend," "estimate," "will," "may," "should," "expect," “designed to,” “potentially,” and similar expressions, and include statements regarding the safety and effectiveness of the Neuro-Spinal Scaffold™, the status of the clinical program, and the company’s plans regarding future publications. Any forward-looking statements contained herein are based on current expectations, and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. Factors that could cause actual future results to differ materially from current expectations include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties relating to the company’s ability to successfully open additional clinical sites for enrollment and to enroll additional patients; the timing of the Institutional Review Board process; the expected benefits and efficacy of the company’s products and technology in connection with the treatment of spinal cord injuries; the availability of substantial additional funding for the company to continue its operations and to conduct research and development, clinical studies and future product commercialization; and other risks associated with the company’s business, research, product development, regulatory approval, marketing and distribution plans and strategies identified and described in more detail in the company’s Quarterly Report of the three months ended June 30, 2017, and its other filings with the SEC, including the company’s Form 10-Qs and current reports on Form 8-K. The company does not undertake to update these forward-looking statements.
