Veran Medical
Mar 20, 2008
WASHINGTON D.C., March 20, 2008 – A renowned group of physicians presented at the “Frontiers of Image-guided Interventional Oncology” session at SIR 2008. Coordinated by Filip Banovac, MD, Georgetown University, Kevin Cleary, PhD, Georgetown University, and Bradford Johns Wood, MD, NIH, the sessions focused on minimally invasive diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. Dr. Damian Dupuy, Brown University Rhode Island Hospital, presented his vision and described his early clinical experience using the SPiN IR™ System with Plug-n-Play capability. Dr. Dupuy’s presentation (see Dupuy presentation) highlighted the benefits for lung cancer procedures of tracking patient respiratory motion to perform complex procedures in a shorter period of time with greater safety and accuracy. Dr. Dupuy and other members of the esteemed panel agreed that navigation in lung cancer procedures has great potential to improve diagnostic and therapeutic outcomes, reduce radiation dose, and reduce treatment variability.
Veran is a privately held medical device company headquartered in St. Louis, MO. The company’s mission is to empower physicians to diagnose cancer earlier and to enable precision therapy to save lives. In the United States, lung cancer kills more people each year than breast, prostate, pancreatic and colon cancers combined.
Veran has developed and commercialized an FDA cleared, next generation electromagnetic thoracic navigation platform called the SPiN Thoracic Navigation System®. Veran’s breakthrough technology has been adopted by leading cancer centers throughout the United States. Veran provides physicians with a full line of bronchoscopic brushes, needles, forceps and steerable catheters with tiny electromagnetic sensors embedded in the tips for precise navigation. The combination of these proprietary Always-On Tip Tracked® instruments and Veran’s exclusive patient respiratory gating technology enables physicians to accurately access lung nodules by accounting for nodule movement during patient breathing, a common challenge for lung specialists.
Another challenge lung specialists face is that approximately 40% of lung nodules lie outside of an airway, making them very difficult to reach endobronchially, and traditionally requiring an additional procedure. Veran’s SPiN Thoracic Navigation System® is the first and only FDA cleared technology that enables Pulmonologists or Thoracic Surgeons to safely and accurately access lung nodules outside of an airway using SPiN Perc®, a navigated transthoracic needle. With SPiN Perc®, Veran combines endobronchial navigation with percutaneous navigation, allowing physicians to access all lung nodules in a single procedure, regardless of nodule size or location. This eliminates the cost and risk of unnecessary procedures and empowers physicians to provide a same day diagnosis for their patients. The early diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer has been proven to save lives.