Four problems, each measured
before it is treated.
Every program below begins with a quantity a clinician cannot currently see during the procedure, and ends with a device that reports it in real time. The common substrate is conductance.
- Active programs
- 04
- Patent estate
- 200+
- Therapeutic areas
- Cardiovascular · GI
Conductance Balloon Post-Dilatation Catheter
~50%of stented lesions fall short of the conventional expansion threshold. Median expansion across the 2,128 core-lab-read cases in ILUMIEN IV was 79.1% of the average reference lumen area
The problem
A stent that is not opened to the size of the artery around it is the strongest predictor of restenosis there is. Underexpansion is a different failure from malapposition, and it is the one that matters most, yet the operator cannot see it on angiography, because angiography images the contrast column rather than the stent.
The approach
A post-dilatation balloon with conductance electrodes on its shaft. As the balloon inflates it reports minimum stent area and minimum stent diameter continuously, so the operator stops when the number is right rather than when the balloon looks right.
Stabilization Device for Trans-septal Access
The problem
Crossing from the right atrium to the left means pushing a needle through the septum on a beating, moving wall. The puncture site wanders. Every structural procedure that follows, atrial fibrillation ablation, septal defect repair, mitral valve repair, appendage closure, inherits that instability.
The approach
A device that anchors to the septum first and punctures second, holding the access point still for the length of the procedure and returning the operator to a known position after every exchange.
Mild Hypothermia Catheter for Reperfusion Injury
~250,000Americans present with ST-elevation myocardial infarction each year, between a quarter and a third of all heart attacks
The problem
Opening a blocked coronary artery saves the patient and injures the muscle. Restoring flow to starved tissue triggers a second wave of cell death, and cooling the myocardium blunts it. Cooling the whole patient to get there causes shivering, arrhythmia and delay.
The approach
Selective auto-retroperfusion. Cooled arterial blood is routed backward through the cardiac venous system into the territory at risk, so the temperature drop lands where the infarct is and nowhere else. Efficacy has been shown in swine.
Sizing Valvuloplasty Conductance Balloon
~780kAmericans over 75 are estimated to have severe aortic stenosis, of whom roughly 590,000 are symptomatic
The problem
A transcatheter valve that is a millimeter too small leaks around its rim. Moderate or greater paravalvular leak roughly doubles the hazard of death, and it is decided by a sizing judgment made from CT slices weeks before the case.
The approach
A valvuloplasty balloon that measures the aortic annulus by conductance during the pre-dilatation the operator was going to perform anyway. The prosthesis is chosen against a measurement taken minutes earlier, on the table, under the patient's own loading conditions.
All four rest on the same measurement.
Nearly everything here descends from one measurement. Pass a small current between two electrodes inside a vessel and the tissue answers. The answer is geometry: the exact cross-section of the lumen you are standing in, live, without contrast and without guesswork.