Penza, 17 December 2015. PenzaNews. The cutting-edge medical items produced by specialists of the Penza “MedInzh” can compete with foreign alternatives as they proved their high-quality status and are sold at affordable prices, suggested Vladlen Bazylev, chief medical officer of the federal cardiovascular surgery center (FCVSC) under the Russian Health Ministry, during the press conference at “Rameev” technopark held on Thursday, December 17.

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“For example, we use only the mechanical heart valves produced by ‘MedInzh.’ It may look like advertising to some. But on the other hand, I’d like to tell you that when we were in an operating theater in Hannover, other doctors, our colleagues – surgeons like us – inspected the valves, and took great interest in them. They liked [the valves]. […] On the other hand, they have different concept there – they are using only the valves made of bio-grown materials. Like they say, the rich have their own quirks,” he added.

The Penza enterprise is one of the very few that ships its heart valves to Europe for sale, Vladlen Bazylev pointed out.

“You don’t even know how difficult it is to compete in the European medical prosthetics and implants market. Companies have enormous budgets, the companies are enormous, and there’s this humble company in the Netherlands selling Russian heart valves,” the FCVSC chief medical officer added.

Moreover, “MedInzh” offers a wide range of plasty materials for heart surgeries, he noted.

“We use only [their] mitral valve and tricuspid valve plasty rings. I’d like to tell you than when we were operating in St. Petersburg, we ‘stashed’ this ring to our Hannover colleagues. They used it with pleasure, and then they were recalling it – long after, when we were in Hannover – that the St. Petersburg ring they used had been a very good one,” Vladlen Bazylev said.

In his opinion, “it is nice to know that Russia trades not only in raw materials but also in cutting-edge items, such as in medicine.”

The head of the cardiovascular surgery center also pointed out that only four countries, including Russia, are currently producing mechanical heart valves, while the rest of the world imports them.

“The whole medicine budget of Russia is a niche for import replacement, because it is 90% tied to imported items. […] In heart surgery, it is almost 98% import,” he said.

Vladlen Bazylev placed particular emphasis on the fact that the Penza-based federal cardiovascular surgery center uses the produces by “MedInzh” not due to close location.

“Not in the slightest. We only buy the items that prove to be of high quality and within a certain price range. That means, of course it must be cheaper than the Western alternatives, and have at least the same quality,” he concluded.