This article is from in the January 2008 issue of DOTmed Business News. A list of registered users that provide sales & service can be found at the end.

The high-end surgical microscopes available incorporate a wide range of advanced features and accessories including surgical microscope cameras, monitors, recorders and printers. There are also microscopes with speed recognition that is a voice activated control system in the microscope that helps control various functions like zoom, focus and X-ray movements. The days of purchasing surgical microscopes based simply on magnification, illumination and focusing are long gone. Today, when purchasing a new surgical microscope, which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, balance, stability, positioning, viewing, Image Guided Surgery (IGS) and documentation capabilities must be considered.
Manufacturers have improved apochromatically-corrected color, which provides the surgeon a truer color of structures that could not be done before. Floor stands are improved giving smoother, easier movement, using electromagnetic release or easy positioning, and assisting microscopes have improved as well, with some microscopes providing the assistant stereoscopic imaging.

Surgeons around the world have been performing intricate surgeries with surgical microscopes for over half a century. Pioneered by Carl Zeiss , a leading German company in optical and opto-electronic industry, microscopic surgery was first performed on a human in 1957.

There is, of course, a robust market for new O/R surgical microscopes. However, there is also a sizeable market for used and refurbished units that can sell for as much as 20 to 60 percent less than a new one.
Nicholas Toal, corporate account executive, Seiler Instruments and Manufacturing, St. Louis, MO said the company's Seiler Precision Microscopes division sells new microscopes and sometimes offers "demo" specials on equipment that has been in the field for a long period of time or when upgrades have been made to Seiler's microscopic units. According to Toal, Seiler is the largest microscope company in the world that only sells through dealers and distributors, "unlike the major players in the microscope game that sell their products directly."




"When it comes to market share," Toal says, "Seiler offers microscopes in several areas in the medical and dental market, so it is hard to gauge exactly where we are market wise. I guess it's safe to say, we are at the top." Seiler sells colposcopes for gynecology, women's health, proctology, ear nose and throat (ENT), dental, ophthalmology, surgical and compound microscopes. They also sell medical and dental loupes with an available LED loupe light (type of magnification device) and many other accessories.

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