"We've seen a big decrease in II sales and if a hospital has multiple rooms with II capabilities, they will shut down a room if it needs a new II, rather than spend the $40,000-$60,000 to replace the II," says Ralph Babcock, general manager of Rural Hill, NC-based Imaging Affiliates. "The daily census reports that all the hospitals are down from 90% occupancy to between 60-70% usage. This has a corresponding reduction in diagnostic imaging procedures and less usage of X-ray tubes and IIs."

It's not that no one is buying tubes or image intensifiers, but the challenge is delivering the latest technology at a reduced price. What hospitals were willing to pay five years ago has decreased substantially.


"The state of business in 2009 is that capital equipment sales are down and most of the tubes we sell are in the CT environment and since CT sales are off, that would lead you to believe that our sales would be off, but that's not the case," says David Kuehn, VP of Global Sales and Marketing for Dunlee, a division of Philips Healthcare. "For us, we have a pretty diversified tube business."

Dunlee provides midlevel tubes in China and other global markets in what they call their value segment, and that has driven its tube business over the last year.

"If we were only selling tubes that were high-tier, our sales would be down, but because we do a lot of sales in the 16-slice and below, those sales are holding really well," says Kuehn.

A big part of Dunlee's tube market is in providing a service business that creates alternative tubes for what the OEMs are offering.

"We don't just make tubes for Philips CTs, we make tubes for GE, Siemens, Toshiba...so we diversified our portfolio so we can serve the entire install base," Kuehn says. "We have a little more dynamic tube business than GE or Siemens, where if the market is off, they don't have an opportunity to grow. We have an opportunity to grow even in a down market because we provide tubes for all brands."

The genesis for this occurred 12 years ago in an effort to fuel its manufacturing facility.

"We knew if we could build a good Philips tube, we could build the others," Kuehn says. "Hospitals were looking to save money and this was one of the areas they could do that."

Tube Options

In the tube market industry, what people are most excited about is having options. One of the biggest things to come along in 2009 is that pre-owned GE MX240 and Siemen Stratton CT tubes are now becoming available in the replacement marketplace.

"In a replacement tube business, which I am in, there will be a need for replacement tubes and from my standpoint, these becoming available on the marketplace is a good thing," says Martin Nash, President of Kans.-based A2X-RAY. "The X-ray tube sector needs new equipment sales levels to return to normal. This will allow companies to fund new system development, and in turn, fund new tube development."

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