Okay. Good afternoon. We're going to move forward with our next presentation. We're pleased to have with us Teleflex. Teleflex has attended a conference for the past several years, so we really appreciate them returning again this year.
They've got a lot to talk about, especially with the CEO of the company as well as Jake Elguise, who is VP, Investor Relations and the Treasurer. So with that, I'll turn it over to Liam.
Thanks, Larry. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining me today. We truly enjoy attending this conference, and we appreciate your interest in Teleflex. Given that the conference is focused more towards portfolio managers, my goal today is to keep this presentation a bit more generic and to assist you in becoming more informed about our company. And in the interest of time, I will keep my prepared remarks to a minimum so that we can allow for Q and A at the end of the presentation.
Before I begin, I want to make you aware that during the course of this presentation, I will be referencing forward looking statements and information. The full advisory concerning these statements is located on this slide for your reference. Teleflex is a more than seventy year old company, which got its start making specialized cable systems for aircraft during World War II. Many of those same cabling systems were also useful in ships, which led to the establishment of the Teleflex Marine business. Teleflex had always been a good acquirer of companies with high quality products and good technical resources regardless of the industry.
Over time, we acquired assets in the automotive and commercial fields and a few medical device companies as well along the way. Around the year 02/2005, members of the Teleflex management team and Board began thinking about expanding its presence in the medical device area. At this time, about 50% of our revenue was in the automotive space and the future didn't look especially promising for parts manufacturers supplying big automotive customers. That strategy led to the divestiture of our automotive business and the acquisition of Arrow, a $500,000,000 medical device company, which was the company's largest acquisition ever. Over time, the trajectory of these decisions led us to the conclusion that we would be best to shed all our non medical device assets and that was concluded in 2011.
Given the relative rapid nature of our transformation, the Board of Directors felt that it was essential to have a management team that was well experienced in the medical device industry and as such, a new management team was put in place in 2011. I think I can speak for the entire management team in saying that we joined the company enthusiastically because we all thought that it was well positioned to take advantage of some latent opportunities in its cost structure and that we would be able to develop a strong product portfolio that would be ideal in the future health care economy. Today, Teleflex is a global provider of medical technology and our focus is on products that improve clinical outcomes, reduce procedural costs and improve patient and provider safety. We employ approximately 12,600 people worldwide and have market leading positions with well recognized global brands. During 2016, revenues totaled $1,870,000,000 and increased 4.1% on a constant currency basis, while our adjusted operating margin expanded two sixty basis points, reaching 24.1%.
The vast majority of our products are sold to hospitals or health care providers, while some of our products are also used in an at home setting and some of our technologies enable us to provide specialized products to other medical device manufacturers. One of the things appealing about Teleflex is that we are well diversified both from a geographic and clinical use perspective. And as a result, we are not dependent on any one product, procedure or market. That fact has allowed us to deliver consistent results even when some of those markets, products or procedures have experienced significant volatility. Now, as we move on to a description of our segments, I would like to point out that in North America, our segments are driven by call point and clinical practice, while outside of North America, our segments are organized around regions and countries.
Our largest North American segment is Vascular Access, which generated approximately three fifty million dollars of revenue during 2016. These products are used to administer intravenous medications or other therapies directly into the blood system where the use of a standard IV would be inadequate. There are two principal kinds of catheters that are used in this application. One is a central venous catheter, which you can see in the picture here. In recent years, we have been providing variety of kit configurations, which helps reduce injuries to health care providers and expedite the placement of these catheters.
However, our main focus has been to improve the performance of our catheters through specialty coatings that reduce the likelihood of infections and thrombus. We have the only central venous catheters that have an antimicrobial claim and recently published studies demonstrate a considerable reduction in infections when our catheter is used versus an uncoated catheter. Reducing infections and eliminating the costs associated with those infections has become an increasingly important goal of healthcare providers. So not surprisingly, we have the global leading market position and share in this product category. A peripherally inserted catheter or a PICC is another device that can be used.
And while we are not the market lead in this category, we have introduced highly accurate tip placement systems and catheters with antimicrobial and antithrombogenic coatings that are starting to show promising growth trends. We believe that minimizing infections and improving tip navigation and targeting will be increasingly important in the future and we continue to invest in this area. A third way to introduce high volume fluids into a patient's blood system is by drilling a small hole into the bone. Surprisingly, this is not as painful as it sounds, but most patients are unconscious when this is happening in any event. Patients in need of immediate high volume fluids usually have a loss of blood pressure, which makes a needle stick into a vein extremely difficult.
By drilling a small hole into the bone, the bone actually acts as a very large vein and the fluid is very quickly absorbed into the bloodstream through the marrow. This is an excellent clinical alternative in emergency situations whether it's in an ambulance, in the emergency room in the hospital or on the crash cart in the intensive care unit. Turning next to our anesthesia business. We have two principal product areas in anesthesia. One is airway management and the other is pain management.
Our revenue during 2016 for this segment was approximately $200,000,000 The most frequent use of airway products is for patients who receive general anesthesia. During general anesthesia, the airway needs to be protected in cases of regurgitation or reflux. Historically, an ET tube has been used, but a more recent innovation is a laryngeal mask, which is pictured on the slide. Royal then penetrates into the airway and cause potential damage to the vocal cords as an ET tube does, the laryngeal mask covers over the airway opening and eliminates certain complications associated with an ET tube. As a result of those advantages, the global use of laryngeal masks spread quickly as an alternative to ET tubes, particularly in shorter procedures.
Teleflex has a leading market share in the laryngeal mask segment. And during the course of 2016 and 2017, we've introduced and will be introducing new products that we believe will increase our market share even further. The product you see pictured here is an example. It is our next generation device, which is designed for much longer intubations. We believe this will convert many ET tube users over to laryngeal masks.
Teleflex is also a leading supplier of laryngoscopes. Laryngoscopes are devices that are used to place ET tubes. This market is rapidly moving towards completely disposable devices and Teleflex has an excellent product offering. We've acquired our supplier of the product in Israel, and this should help to improve our margins and increase the speed of new product development. Finally, one of the promising areas in our Anesthesia business unit is a product called Mad Nasal.
Certain medications, pain medications, for example, can be much more quickly delivered into the blood system when atomized and absorbed by the highly vascular nasal passages. This is much less invasive than IV and much quicker acting than intramuscular injections. We have some regulatory hoops to go through in The U. S, but the product is already developed and being used more and more extensively in third world countries as it eliminates many of the problems associated with traditional needle injections. Moving to our Surgical business.
It is the third largest segment in North America and its revenues was approximately $172,000,000 during 2016. Our Surgical products include ligation closure products, specialty sutures, access ports, reusable handheld instruments and fluid management. One of the unique innovations driving this franchise is our Hemaloc product, which is pictured here. While more expensive than the standard metal clip, Hemaloc has a locking system that the surgeon can feel when the clip is being closed properly. This offers considerable advantages in laparoscopic procedures, which may have limited visibility.
This product is an excellent example of the fact that hospitals will pay more for a product that has an obvious clinical benefit. A relatively new area of focus for the company is microlaparoscopic products. Almost since the beginning of laparoscopic surgery, there has been an effort to make the procedure even less invasive. The focus has been on eliminating the need for additional ports, But unfortunately, those efforts were unsuccessful because they were either too complicated to learn or had their own set of complications. Our Percutaneous product line solved these problems and was the end result of four separate acquisitions, one of which was for the basic PerkyVance technology.
The other two were related patents, while a fourth acquisition of the Mini Lap product line rounded out our portfolio. Both sets of instruments can be introduced into the body cavity without the need for a port. It is our belief that these two product offerings will allow the company to take advantage of the growing microlaparoscopic surgery market and accelerate revenue growth and improve the margin profile of the company. Outside of North America, we manage our businesses by geography. Our two largest regions are Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia.
Our EMEA region contributes approximately 27% of our 2016 revenue, while our APAC region contributes approximately 13% of our revenue. In nearly every major country, we have our own country management and direct sales force that creates demand at the end user level. However, in a number of emerging markets, we still utilize distributors and therefore have an opportunity to further improve our revenues and margins by converting to a direct sales model and delayering our distribution network. That takes me to our OEM business, which is where Teleflex began in the medical device industry close to thirty years ago. Sales in our OEM segment totaled approximately $161,000,000 during 2016.
Within this business, we have a number of technologies such as custom engineered extrusions, specialty sutures, performance fibers and bioabsorbable resins are quite useful in clinical markets in which we don't sell products ourselves. By designing and manufacturing products for other manufacturers who do not have a significant presence in those markets, it allows us to participate in segments we couldn't effectively compete in on our own, such as orthopedics and vascular surgery. Finally, our remaining business are reported under a segment we refer to as All Other. This segment includes intra aortic balloons and pumps, respiratory therapy products and our Latin American business. Our strategy is built around three principal components.
The first is our perspective as to what the Medical Device market will look like in the coming years. This strongly shapes our R and D and acquisition efforts. As we think about the health care market, it is and will continue to be driven by two connected but often conflicting trends, the first of which centers around increased utilization. This trend is driven by an aging population in the traditional industrialized countries and a growing middle class in developing countries. Beginning in 2011, the first baby boomers began crossing over that 65 year old age line.
Just in The United States alone, it's happening at the rate of about 10,000 people per day. Now we're not suggesting that people go to the hospital the day they turn 65, but as they get into their early 70s, the frequency of health care interventions increases dramatically. In addition to the aging demographics, there is an expanding middle class in select developing markets, and these people are demanding better health care. This is true for areas like China as well as the rest of Asia and South America. As a result of these trends, we can expect extremely favorable demographics and utilization over the next ten to fifteen years.
But the other related and conflicting trend is that of increasing cost and the question of how to pay for this level of health care. We expect that economic pressure is likely to result in changes of how care is delivered and what care is delivered. The second part of our strategy surrounds capitalizing on Teleflex's current strength to succeed in the future health care environment. Particularly advantageous to us is our scope and size. First, our scope, and by that I mean the areas of health care that we are zeroing in on.
As we look into the future, we believe that improved diagnostic capability, changes in reimbursement and other technology developments will have very different impacts on current procedures. We are in multiple clinical areas that generally involve acute interventions that cannot be easily postponed without severe consequences to the patient, and we really like that space. What we have observed over the past twenty years is during tough economic conditions, procedures that can be postponed will be postponed. For Teleflex, that means we need to continue to build our franchises that are most likely to benefit from increased utilization and least likely to be negatively affected by economic pressures. Another advantage is our size.
While we are large enough to be a global company and have a substantial presence with our customers, we are also small enough to benefit from investments or acquisitions like our recently completed acquisition of Vascular Solutions, which would not move the needle much for significantly larger companies. And finally, our third strategic initiative includes opportunities that are somewhat unique to Teleflex. A number of such opportunities like footprint consolidation and the delayering of our distributor channel could enable us to continue to expand the margin profile of the company for several years into the future. That takes me to the end of my prepared remarks. By way of conclusion, I will summarize Teleflex's key investment highlights.
First, we are a diverse global medical technology company and we are not dependent on a single product or single market. This diversification helps to mitigate the risk of a changing macro environment. Second, we are currently well positioned to succeed in the marketplace. This is due to both the non postponable nature of many of our products as well as the continued opportunity for non revenue dependent margin expansion. Next, we have a leading market position with well established global brands and are committed to continuously improvement within our portfolio.
We have a diversified customer and supplier base. We generate strong free cash flow and have a proven history of deleveraging and margin expansion. And finally, we have an experienced management team that has executed a broad array of activities from manufacturing reorganization to product development to acquisition, all of which have led to significant shareholder value creation over the past five years. Thank you very much for your attention today, and I'd like to turn the presentation back to Larry for Q and A.
Great. Thank you, Liam. First off, I want to apologize to Benson Smith as I inaccurately indicated that Liam was the CEO of the company, but he actually doesn't get that title till the end of this year.
Was So merely shout out for my promotion already.
So let me start off first and then we'll see if there are any questions from the audience. I guess in the context of your soon to be leadership role within the company, this has been a company that over the last several years has transformed itself as you indicated from what was an industrial sort company into a pure play healthcare company. The healthcare landscape is changing. And I'm sort of curious as to if we were to fast forward five years from now, what do you think Teleflex looks like? And I guess part of what I'm getting to is, there opportunities to prune the portfolio?
Are there opportunities to move in a different direction? How do you sort of think about that?
Okay. So if I look back first, Larry, to 2011 when we began the transformation, Teleflex has indeed transformed itself as a company. We've transformed the management team. We've transformed even the Board of Directors. We have moved really to the pure play medical device company.
Back in 2011, our revenues in medical devices was $1,400,000,000 And today, it's in the region of about $2,000,000,000 we should achieve in 2017. As we look forward, I have to tell you, I've never been more excited to be part of this company. We've never had a more robust product pipeline. We have margin expansion opportunities in front of us for multi years. The margin expansion that we've outlined goes through to 2020, but I wouldn't like the investment community to think that it ends there.
We believe there are other opportunities even beyond the 2020 time frame for Teleflex to expand on that. We will continue to be a serial acquirer into the future. I think Vascular Solutions is an example of an excellent transaction that we did, as was VitaCare in the past and as was LMA at scale acquisitions. We will also continue to do our dealer to direct conversions. We recently announced that we were going direct in China, and that's all part of our strategy as we roll it out.
So I think that the strategy that we've implemented under Benson Smith and the new management team has been tried, it's been tested, it is time relevant and has driven tremendous shareholder value. And we will continue to do that into the future. To answer your question regarding portfolio, in the past, we have probably looked at our respiratory therapy business as potentially an opportunity to prune the portfolio. It is dilutive to our gross margin aspirations, but it is accretive to our operating margin, Larry. And therefore, it generates a significant amount of cash.
We don't invest in that portfolio in the same way as we would in vascular, surgical or anesthesia. So therefore, there's better drop through because it takes less sales effort, less marketing, less R and D to keep that portfolio as it is. And the current environment within the marketplace allows that portfolio to grow faster than it has done in the past. So in the past, it was a drag from a growth perspective growing at 1% or 2%. But we have seen some opportunities there to grow that portfolio at the 4% to 5%, which allows it to generate even more cash and cash that we use to do accretive acquisitions.
So I don't see a significant change for Teleflex during my tenure as CEO, just more faster and better of what we've been doing over the last seven years. Terrific. Question back there. Pricing and volume trends historically going forward? So we have been I'll deal with pricing first.
So we have been a little bit of an anomaly within the health care space insofar as that we have been able to take positive pricing from the marketplace. Traditionally, we were delivering close to 1% in positive pricing as we made a conscious effort to price our product appropriately within the marketplace. In the last two years, we've been able to take in the region of 20 to 30 basis points in positive pricing. We target specific parts of our portfolio within our vascular, surgical and anesthesia portfolios that give us opportunity to take pricing. And you'll see in our guidance that we've issued for next year, we have 50 to 60 basis points of pricing in 2017.
Within that, you should realize that the China go direct is included within that. So the core pricing is still positive in that 20 basis points range. Core volume, our guidance for 2017 is for 1.8% to 2.4% in volume growth. We believe that our portfolio in that non postponable procedure aspect of our portfolio allows us to take advantage of the demographics I was talking about earlier. 10,000 Americans every year crossing over into that 65 age bracket.
Demand for our products in the critical arena is almost inevitable that it increases. The average U. S. Citizen will spend approximately $360,000 in their lifetime on health care, Between $50,000 and $65,000 10% of that expenditure is spent. Between $65,000 and $85,000 60% is expended.
So therefore, it is almost inevitable with the baby boomers, 10,000 people a day crossing over into that plus 65%, 70% mark, there will be an increase in volume for products such as Teleflex offer in that acute environment.
Question? Did you still have one
back there? You got one? Yes. So this year, our core constant currency growth that we put out there is 12.5% to 14%. That includes Vascular Solutions.
Vascular Solutions as 8.5% to 9%, and our core organic constant currency growth is in that 4% to 5% range. On an ongoing basis, we have put out longer term goals there for growth of 5% to 6%. We believe our portfolio is imminently capable of delivering five to 6% organic constant currency revenue growth. And we believe that where that's going to come from is an acceleration in new products. We've guided this year for new products to 1.4% to 1.6%.
When we closed quarter four, new products globally for us delivered 1.6%. So we see our 1.4% to 1.6%. Once we can get through these value analysis committees, that will start to gain more and more traction. And just to give you a benchmark, Q1 last year, our new products were 1.1%, and we finished Q4 at 1.6 So our trajectory of new products is pretty solid. And we've guided, as we would see it, reasonably conservatively for new products.
And on an ongoing basis, we see the likes of VitaCare adding 1% to our top line growth. We see Vascular Solutions with the potential to offer between 80 basis points and one percent of top line growth. And, of course, new products and volume making up the remainder to get us to that 5% to 6% growth rate.
Okay. Last one.
So outside of North America, let me talk about I'll tell you our expectation for growth, including North America. So we expect mid- to high single digit growth in North America, and we're actually achieving that today. In 2016, our North American business grew by 5.5%. Outside of North America, we've seen a recovery in EMEA. For the first half of twenty sixteen, EMEA showed a slight decline.
And in the second half, we saw growth in the 2.5% range. In Asia, we believe so EMEA, longer term, we believe, will deliver low single digit growth. For APAC, we believe that APAC has the potential to deliver high single, low double digit growth over a multiyear period. And we're focused on three key markets within Asia. We're focused within China.
We're focused in India and in Korea. And we'll be taking opportunistic approach to Southeast Asia and Japan and the other geographies there. So the blockers to growth are really the economic conditions that sometimes exist in those markets. We saw in Latin America, for example, last year, significant turmoil in Latin America and other oil based countries, so The Middle East, for example. Now we've anniversaried Latin America at quarter three, and we saw a nice recovery in quarter four.
We will anniversary the Middle East issue in quarter one. So a lot of those blockers that we saw last year, we kind of anniversary them in a run rate once we get into quarter two of twenty seventeen.
Okay. Perfect. We're going to adjourn here and management will be available in the Amarante 1 Room downstairs.