China’s wound surgery market outlook: domestic players win market share in tier 3 and 4 cities

China’s wound surgery market outlook


China’s wound closure market—covering synthetic, conventional and barbed sutures—grew by more than 20% in 2021 compared to the previous year. This is due to the recovery of surgery procedures and the purchasing of higher-value devices.

“Against strong headwinds from volume-based procurement (VBP), the wound closure market will continue to grow at 9.0% per annum from 2022 to 2026. Majority of the growth is attributed to the steady increase in procedure volume. The market will also upgrade its product mix towards premium barbed sutures, which offsets some of the losses from price erosion as VBP knocks down prices by 30-50% across segments” said Andy Hua, product specialist, Clearstate. 

Surgical Gateway provides medtech companies with data, analysis and forecasts for key market segments. This includes wound closure devices at city-tier and hospital-class levels to enable companies to operate successfully in an increasingly complex market environment.

Essential 2021-2022 insights on the China wound closure market:

  • In 2021 the strongest growth came from barbed sutures
  • Non-absorbable sutures have a higher rate of adoption in tier 1 cities than tier 3 and 4 cities—where high pricing and underskilled surgeons are challenges
  • Non-absorbable sutures have a higher rate of adoption in Class 3 hospitals than Class 2 hospitals
  • Absorbable sutures have the highest adoption rate in stomach, liver, obstetric, thyroid and breast procedures
  • A strong demand for non-absorbable sutures in cardiovascular surgery such as structural heart, aortic and heart defect procedures—all have a 100% adoption rate
  • The high cost of barbed sutures has resulted in low levels of adoption—not exceeding 20% across various surgical areas 
  • Domestic companies emerging in the wound closure market include Holycon, Jinhuan and Wego
  • Domestic companies win market share in tier 3 and 4 cities. They also lead in Class 2 hospitals in tier 2 cities for segments such as absorbable sutures. MNCs still have a stronghold in tier 1 cities

China surgical device market insights and tracker

China Segmentation Surgical Devices Tracker for Surgical Gateway is the go-to source of data, analysis and forecasts for the world’s largest emerging surgical device market at city-tier and hospital-class levels. Clearstate’s Surgical China segmentation offers access to surgical market data to provide the visibility for medtech companies to operate successfully in an increasingly diverse and complex surgical devices market environment.