Lung Cancer Management
May 12, 2016
A newly published study that followed 50 patients referred for bronchoscopy or surgery demonstrated that a physician using Veran Medical’s thoracic navigation technology successfully and accurately diagnosed 83.3% of patients with suspicious peripheral lung nodules, which had previously been considered difficult to access. Interventional Pulmonologist Dr. Abhijit Raval at AnMed Health, a community hospital in Anderson, South Carolina followed these patients for two years, and the published study results are now available here in Lung Cancer Management.
“The Veran technology has significantly increased our confidence to accurately reach smaller PPNs. The ability to collect staging samples and to accurately biopsy the lesion in a single procedure is very encouraging to streamline patient care,” said study author Dr. Abhijit Raval.
Published diagnostic yields vary depending on nodule location and size but range from 50-70% with traditional lung specialist tools. Veran Medical’s SPiN Thoracic Navigation System utilizes proprietary Always-On Tip Tracked® instruments with tiny electromagnetic sensors in the tips to safely and precisely navigate physicians to hard to reach targets. Published research confirms that those lung nodules move when a patient is routinely breathing —creating a moving target for the lung specialists trying to reach them. Unlike older navigation technology, Veran’s exclusive 4D inspiration/expiration respiratory gated technology compensates for this natural respiratory movement. Veran’s technology ensures physicians can confidently and accurately reach target nodules even if a patient coughs, moves, or simply breathes in and out during the procedure.
“The differences between older electromagnetic navigation technology that maps patients lungs based on total lung capacity (arms up, lungs full of air) and Veran’s more dynamic mapping system that enables respiratory gating are critical to achieve a more accurate representative location of the lesion.” said Dr. Raval. “Veran’s technology eliminates the documented inaccuracies of traditional Electromagnetic navigation systems that base their mapping on a single CT scan when the patient’s lungs are full of air.”
48 patients had a total of 61 lesions biopsied. 19 patients were diagnosed with malignant tumors that required therapy. More than half of the lesions accessed were less than 2cm in diameter.
“The evidence is clear that early diagnosis of lung cancer dramatically improves the chance of survival,” said Veran CEO Jason Pesterfield. “Veran’s SPiN Thoracic Navigation system and SPiNPerc are transforming the physician’s ability to accurately access and diagnose hard to reach Solitary Pulmonary Nodules (SPNs) and to provide cost-effective care for the 2.7 million SPNs found annually in the US.”
Encouragingly investigators documented a promising trend that diagnostic yields improved significantly (from 80% for first 25 patients to 87% for next 23 patients) due to a learning curve with the technology. One pneumothorax was noted with no additional complications reported.
Noting the high number of positive scans in the National Lung Screening Trial, study investigators reported that community hospitals will be challenged to provide a minimally invasive method to consistently reach these lesions and rule out cancer. “The new Veran mapping system that was evaluated in this study shows promise to help lung specialists meet this new challenge,” said Dr. Raval. “Veran’s system adds numerous new tools to the lung cancer diagnostic armamentarium, which now includes SPiNPerc, a navigated transthoracic needle that was released after the completion of our study.”
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.