Bone marrow aspiration is just about the most unpleasant clinical procedure for both the patient and doctor. Drilling into an awake and conscious person’s ischial tuberosity has a similar flavor to performing surgery 200 years ago with the patient screaming in pain and chewing on a whiskey cloth. The trick is to do it quick while getting a usable sample to send to the lab. To that end, Vidacare out of Shavano Park, Texas has released the new lithium batter powered OnControl Aspiration System that the company believes will bring a much needed new level of efficiency to this procedure.
From the press release:
Prior to its full launch, Vidacare implemented a validation study to measure successful sample acquisition rates, quality of sample, ease of use, and overall user satisfaction. Thirty-one clinicians from thirteen sites in the U.S. participated in this evaluation, and all were first-time users. Testing sites included the Cancer Research and Technology Center of the University of Texas/San Antonio (San Antonio, Texas), M.D. Anderson Cancer Center (Houston, Texas), Wilshire Oncology (Glendora, CA) and Kaiser Permanente Riverside (Riverside, CA) among others. Of the 84 patient procedures completed during the validation testing, results show:
- Mean user satisfaction score of 4.4 (on a scale of 0-5, with 5 indicating high satisfaction)
- Needle insertion success rate of 94%
- Biopsy core acquisition success rate of 90%
- Mean length of core sample of 1.32 cm
- Median time to core extraction of 81 seconds
Product page: OnControl …
Press release: Vidacare’s OnControl Bone Marrow System Is Quantum Leap Forward for Bone Marrow Procedures…
Demo video below the fold: