2012 Ann Arbor Pitches: Accelerate Michigan Innovation Competition

$1.5 million purchase price for wrist splint product assets Current annualized sales approaching $500,000 Deal modestly accretive to net income, neutral to EPS in 2012

MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota — Vascular Solutions, Inc. (Nasdaq: VASC) today announced that it has acquired the radial artery access wrist positioning splint product assets of privately-held Accumed Systems, Inc., headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Since 1999, Accumed has sold the wrist positioning splint product exclusively in the United States via a company website, with current annualized sales approaching $500,000.

Radial artery access for coronary angiography and interventional procedures is now undergoing significant expansion in the United States, due mainly to reduced patient recovery times and improved patient comfort. The Accumed device is designed to simplify arterial access during radial procedures, for both the physician and patient, by holding the wrist and forearm in an appropriate and comfortable position and by eliminating unwanted hand and arm movement during and after the procedure.

The purchase price was $1.5 million, which was paid with cash on hand. Vascular Solutions expects the transaction to have an immediate accretive impact on net income, although the addition of the wrist splint business will not have a material impact on 2012 earnings per share. Beginning in 2013, Vascular Solutions expects the product to be modestly accretive on an earnings per share basis. Under the terms of the agreement, Accumed will manufacture the product for sale by Vascular Solutions through the end of 2014, after which time Vascular Solutions will assume responsibility for manufacturing the device.

“We are very pleased to add the Accumed wrist positioning splint to our lineup of products for the cardiac cath lab, and we believe we can significantly expand sales of this product through our 91-person U.S. direct sales force,” said Howard Root, Chief Executive Officer of Vascular Solutions. “This transaction with Accumed fits with our strategy of pursuing tuck-in acquisitions that leverage our sales force and established call points, and it fits very well with our commitment to meeting the needs of the fast-growing radial artery access market.”

Accumed was founded in 1999 by Dr. William W. O’Neill to provide solutions for radial access procedures. Dr. O’Neill, who on July 31 will become medical director of the new Center for Structural Heart Disease at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, continues to serve on Accumed’s board of directors.Commented Dr. O’Neil: “A detailed analysis by the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions indicated that radial access accounted for under 3% of all interventional procedures in the U.S. in 2009. But that appears to have grown to approximately 12%-15% currently. The U.S. is still very far behind the penetration level for radial access in most other parts of the world, such as Canada at 50% or the average for Europe at around 30%, but radial access will continue to expand rapidly here in the U.S. due to a variety of factors, including the growing body of favorable clinical data, the integration of radial access into practice guidelines, and the availability of specialized radial access devices and catheters.”

“At Accumed, we have always believed that the wrist positioning splint was one of the devices that would help foster the adoption of radial access procedures in the U.S., and we are delighted that the product we developed will now have broader visibility in the marketplace through the sales and marketing support for which Vascular Solutions is so well known,” Dr. O’Neill concluded.

About Accumed Systems

Accumed Systems, Inc. is a private company headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The company was founded in 1999 by the widely-known interventional cardiologist Dr. William W. O’Neill to develop and commercialize trans-radial catheterization accessories. The company’s main product, the Accumed Wrist Positioning Splint, has been sold in the U.S. via the company’s website. Supported by an investment from the Michigan Economic Development Corporation and a grant from the National Institutes of Health, Accumed has more recently launched a program to develop a catheter-based system for detecting vulnerable plaque.

Additional information is available at www.accumedsystemsinc.com.

About Vascular Solutions

Vascular Solutions, Inc. is an innovative medical device company that focuses on developing unique clinical solutions for coronary and peripheral vascular procedures. The company’s product line consists of over 60 products in three categories: catheter products, hemostat products and vein products. Vascular Solutions delivers its products to interventional cardiologists, interventional radiologists, electrophysiologists, and vein specialists through its direct U.S. sales force and international independent distributor network.

The information in this press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Our actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements. Important factors that may cause such differences include those discussed in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2011 and other recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, risks associated with the need for adoption of our new products, lack of sustained profitability, exposure to intellectual property claims, significant variability in quarterly results, exposure to possible product liability claims, the development of new products by others, doing business in international markets, the availability of third party reimbursement, and actions by the FDA.

For further information, connect to www.vasc.com. ###

ANN ARBOR, MICH., November 8, 2004: Accumed Systems, Inc. recently was awarded a two-year, $1.2 million Phase 2 SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) grant from the National Heart, Blood, and Lung Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Accumed will use the money to complete product development of a catheter to improve the diagnosis of patients with atherosclerosis. The catheter is designed to aid physicians in identifying those lesions (or plaques) in the patients’ arteries that are biologically active. Such lesions are considered the primary cause of sudden heart attacks that annually kill 19 million people worldwide (www.vulnerableplaque.org).

“During the first phase of this project we successfully demonstrated the safety of our product in a small number of patients,” explained principal investigator Joseph Korotko. “This continuation grant will allow us to conduct a larger 100-patient study at the William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak MI to further validate the performance of the system and the clinical value of the diagnostic data it produces.”

###

About Accumed Systems, Inc.
Based in Ann Arbor, Mich., this thirteen-year-old medical device company develops and commercializes innovative products for interventional cardiology and other therapeutic areas. Accumed sells its products directly to customers and also licenses them to larger medical device companies that provide broader access to the market. For more information, visit www.accumedsystemsinc.com.

CE Marking on a product signifies that the product complies with essential health, safety and environmental protection requirements for the marketing and distribution of such product throughout the countries which comprise the European Union and the European Free Trade Association.

“The CE Mark is our ‘passport’, which allows our products to gain access to the entire European market, while assuring doctors and patients of the safety of our product,” stated Jim Koert, President of Accumed Systems, Inc. “The CE Marking of our Products follows a comprehensive audit of our quality system.”

The certification is a confirmation that Accumed’s quality systems and their implementation meet the requirements for medical device companies. According to Dan Carroll, Accumed’s Director of Operations, “this quality system certification is a significant milestone on our outlined pathway to meet the stringent regulatory approvals for our products both in the United States and in Europe.”