by
Lauren Dubinsky, Senior Reporter | April 18, 2014
From the April 2014 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Rafi Bayer, an intervention cardiologist from Israel, and Tal Wenderow, executive vice president of business strategy and marketing, founded Corindus Vascular Robotics in 2002, with the goal to make PCI more ergonomic and safe for physicians and also add some precision capabilities that they felt were lacking. While other companies including Medtronic and Boston Scientific made many improvements to guide wires and balloon stents over the past 30 years, the way the procedure was performed remained unchanged.
“They still stand, wearing heavy lead next to the patient, limited by their own human dexterity,” says Brett Prince, director of marketing at Corindus. “So there was really an opportunity to change the way these procedures are done and leverage technology to improve the procedures.”
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Their solution is a robot called the Cor- Path 200 System, which was made commercially available at the end of 2012. The surgeon sits in a cockpit and maneuvers joysticks that control the robotic arms to place the guide wires and stents.
They have all the same capabilities as manual PCI but with the robot they can see the procedure better since they are closer to the monitors. They can also move the devices in one millimeter increments, which is very difficult to replicate manually.
About 20 facilities have currently purchased the system and several have ordered a second unit. Prince says that there is a rapid growth in customer base.
But robots are not the only devices shaping the cath lab, advanced imaging systems are as well. Siemens Healthcare’s new product line for interventional imaging called Artis Q.zen has made significant advancements in the areas of X-ray tubes and detector technology.
Its new GIGALIX X-ray tube uses flat emitter technology as opposed to the traditional filament technology. “With the flat emitter technology, what we can do is we can put much more current through a much smaller footprint,” says Rob Dewey, senior director of cardiology and hybrid OR at Siemens. Since it has a higher maximum current, it can improve the image quality in difficult situations involving obese patients or steep angulations.
Filament technology is rectangular shaped, which can cause some distortion but the new technology is square shaped so it has a more consistent representation of fine details. Also, just like the filament in a light bulb, it eventually burns through but the new technology has a better tolerance for handling current flowing through it for an extended period of time.
