MassHighTech.com is running a story about a Burlington-based medical device startup CorNova Inc. which is trying to incorporate a fiber optic analysis system into coronary angioplasty catheters. According to MassHighTech, the integrated fiber optics technology is designed “to make measurements that allow physicians to tell if a stent is adequately deployed. If there is an under-expanded portion of the stent, the FiberHalo catheter is capable of locating it. To fix an under-expanded stent, doctors would be able to insert Cornova’s FiberHalo post-dilation catheter, which is also equipped with fiber optics. It identifies the under-expanded area, allowing doctors to inflate the balloon to correct it.”
More from the article:
The company is at work on a set of balloon catheters designed to help eliminate cases of stent restenosis, or thrombosis, by helping with stent selection and optimizing the process of implanting the stent, explained Eric Ryan, the company CEO. Its FiberHalo catheters carry a hair-thin fiber wire that provides blood vessel measurement from inside the balloon itself to assist in stent procedures, without a corresponding increase in time, risk or cost.
Here’s what we were able to find about this promising technology on the company’s website:
CorNova’s Halo Angioplasty Balloon™ Catheter is a pre-dilation catheter that also provides diagnostic information about a lesion without substantially increasing time, risk, or cost to the patient.
The Halo Angioplasty Balloon Catheter is an innovative product designed to allow physicians to make more informed decisions about the treatment of specific lesions and enable a new era of advanced interventional treatments. Recent postmortem studies have illustrated that plaque morphology and composition play a significant role in predicting events such as restenosis and stent thrombosis. Unfortunately, fluoroscopy only provides information about the degree of stenosis and no insight into the specifics of the lesion itself.
By utilizing advanced optical technologies, the diagnostic balloon angioplasty catheter provides real-time feedback and diagnosis of the lesion undergoing pre-dilation prior to stent placement. With this new information, the physician will be able to guide both localized and systemic therapies based upon the specific characteristics of the lesion(s) being treated. By integrating this advanced optical analysis within a state-of-the-art angioplasty balloon catheter, the physician can obtain this in-vivo data with no substantially increased time, risk, or cost to the pre-dilation procedure that is already a standard of care in endovascular treatment.
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