Knittlingen, 18 October 2016) Richard Wolf GmbH with headquarters in Knittlingen / Germany is a global manufacturer of technical medical equipment for minimally invasive and endoscopic surgery, and extracorporeal shock wave therapy. It founded the new subsidiary company RIWOspine GmbH on 1 October 2016.
RIWOspine is a highly specialized marketing and sales company for the sphere of minimally invasive and endoscopic spine surgery, and pain therapy. The company operates on the global stage and the registered office is in Knittlingen, Germany.
“Our aim with RIWOSpine is to consolidate and further expand our leading market position in full endoscopic spine surgery as a Center of Competence for the spine within the Wolf Group. As a pioneer in the development of innovative endoscopic solutions for spine surgery, we joined forces with visionary spine surgeons to set milestones, and consistently provide these benchmarks with medical and clinical validation. We then developed them into a standard that has now been acknowledged across the world,” commented Jürgen Steinbeck, Managing Director of Richard Wolf GmbH.
In the mid-1990s, we were already developing the YESS endoscopic surgical system for Percutaneous Endoscopic Lumbar Discectomy together with Dr. Antony Yeung (Phoenix, USA). This involved minimally invasive percutaneous ports to the intervertebral disk combined with high-resolution endoscopic imaging. It facilitated surgical interventions with very small incisions in the skin and endoscopic envisionment. A number of years later, these techniques were expanded into the comprehensive VERTEBRIS concept of full-endoscopic surgery of the entire spine in cooperation with the German team of surgeons led by Dr. Sebastian Ruetten (Herne). New endoscopic ports for the spine were developed and standardized (e.g. interlaminar, lateral-transforaminal, cervical posterior), and further indications for the treatment of stenoses were added for this innovative surgical method.
The prime objectives for RIWOspine GmbH are to fulfil the special requirements entailed in ongoing development of these systems, and meet the challenges for successful worldwide establishment in hospitals. The company presented its profile to an international specialist audience at this year’s EUROSPINE Congress in Berlin in a world first.
Richard Wolf GmbH is a mid-sized medical technology company. It employs a workforce of more than 1,500 employees and maintains a global network of fourteen subsidiaries and 130 foreign representatives. The company develops, manufactures and markets a large range of products for endoscopy and extracorporeal shock wave treatment in human medicine. Integrated Operating Room Systems complete the product portfolio.
