Spotlight On Latin America: Regional Transition Brings Big Opportunities For Medical Device Manufacturers

Over the past three decades, Latin America has experienced a major demographic, epidemiological, and nutritional transition, marked by economic growth, urbanization, and declines in deaths from infant mortality and infectious disease leading to a substantial increase in overall life expectancy. As this shift occurred, however, diseases associated with a more affluent lifestyle began to emerge, a trend that has led to a large regional increase in morbidity and mortality from vascular diseases and stroke. Vascular disease risk factors such as hypertension, high cholesterol, obesity, and diabetes are all on the rise in Latin America, and combined with continuing high rates of tobacco use, contribute to three-quarters of the region’s cardiovascular disease cases today. This upward trend is expected to continue, with mortality due to coronary artery disease and stroke predicted to increase by 145% in Latin America between 1990 and 2020, according to the recently published Clearstate report, “Latin America Surgical Procedure Volume 2011,” distributed exclusively by Medtech Insight/Elsevier Business Intelligence.

As Latin American countries struggle to adapt to and address this shift in medical needs, medical device manufacturers in the cardiovascular space have an opportunity to help them do so...