On reducible Heegaard splittings

Let V∪SW be a reducible Heegaard splitting of genus g = g(S) ⩾ 2. For a maximal prime connected sum decomposition of V ∪SW, let q denote the number of the genus 1 Heegaard splittings of S2 × S1 in the decomposition, and p the number of all other prime factors in the decomposition. The main result of the present paper is to describe the relation of p, q and dim(CV ∩ CW).