Extract complete hyphenated word from .pdf using acrobat.tlb in .NET

I posted this question on Stackoverflow but did not receive any usable answers.

I have just joined the Adobe forums in the hope someone knowledgeable here will be able to answer this specific Adobe Acrobat SDK automation question.

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I am parsing a .pdf using the acrobat.tlb library

Hyphenated words are being split across new lines with the hyphens removed.

e.g. ABC-123-XXX-987

Parses as:
ABC
123
XXX
987

If I parse the text using iTextSharp it parses the whole string as displayed in the file which is the behaviour I want.

However, I need to highlight these strings (serial numbers) in the .pdf and iTextSharp is not placing the highlight in the correct location... hence acrobat.tlb

I am using this code, from here: http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.php?561501-RESOLVED-2003-How-to-highlight-text-in-pdf

' filey = "*your full file name including directory here*"
        AcroExchApp = CreateObject("AcroExch.App")
        AcroExchAVDoc = CreateObject("AcroExch.AVDoc")
        ' Open the [strfiley] pdf file
        AcroExchAVDoc.Open(filey, "")       
        ' Get the PDDoc associated with the open AVDoc
        AcroExchPDDoc = AcroExchAVDoc.GetPDDoc
        sustext = "accessorizes"
        suktext = "accessorises" 
        ' get JavaScript Object
        ' note jso is related to PDDoc of a PDF,
        jso = AcroExchPDDoc.GetJSObject
        ' count
        nCount = 0
        nCount1 = 0
        gbStop = False
        bUSCnt = False
        bUKCnt = False
        ' search for the text
        If Not jso Is Nothing Then
            ' total number of pages
            nPages = jso.numpages           
                ' Go through pages
                For i = 0 To nPages - 1
                    ' check each word in a page
                    nWords = jso.getPageNumWords(i)
                    For j = 0 To nWords - 1
                        ' get a word
                        word = Trim(CStr(jso.getPageNthWord(i, j)))
                        'If VarType(word) = VariantType.String Then
                        If word <> "" Then
                            ' compare the word with what the user wants
                            If Trim(sustext) <> "" Then
                                result = StrComp(word, sustext, vbTextCompare)
                                ' if same
                                If result = 0 Then
                                    nCount = nCount + 1
                                    If bUSCnt = False Then
                                        iUSCnt = iUSCnt + 1
                                        bUSCnt = True
                                    End If
                                End If
                            End If
                            If suktext<> "" Then
                                result1 = StrComp(word, suktext, vbTextCompare)
                                ' if same
                                If result1 = 0 Then
                                    nCount1 = nCount1 + 1
                                    If bUKCnt = False Then
                                        iUKCnt = iUKCnt + 1
                                        bUKCnt = True
                                    End If
                                End If
                            End If
                        End If
                    Next j
                Next i
jso = Nothing
        End If

The code does the job of highlighting the text, but the FOR loop with the 'word' variable is splitting the hyphenated string into component parts prohibiting me from highlighting the complete string.

For i = 0 To nPages - 1
   ' check each word in a page
  nWords = jso.getPageNumWords(i)
   For j = 0 To nWords - 1
   ' get a word

  word = Trim(CStr(jso.getPageNthWord(i, j)))

Does anyone know how to maintain the whole string using acrobat.tlb? My quite extensive searches have drawn a blank.

Many thanks...