At the recent Medical Design & Manufacturing East expo in New York, a session called ‘Innovating Inside the Box’ discussed the process of inventing a device to address infections in patients of high risk surgeries.
Jeremy Koehler, Co-Founder and Director of R&D at Prescient Surgical, told the story that inspired them to focus on finding a solution for infections.
Koehler said after a successful kidney transplant, a surgeon walked down the hall and still proceeded to hang his head in despair. “There’s going to be an infection,” the surgeon said. Despite success, they knew they still had a battle to beat.
The current problem was that incision closures, wound care and intra-operative surgeries often resulted in infections that caused re-admission and re-operation for the patient. The reality of the care path was that between 15 and 20 percent of patients were developing infections from high risk surgeries.
Koehler said they had a need, but no solution.
Root causes of SSIs
What they found out was gut bacteria was the leading cause of surgical site infections, which could be eliminated with an anti-bacteria solution. Unfortunately, surgeons did not have time to stop in the middle of their surgery, take a device and squirt a solution on the area of high-risk infection.
With an evidence-based approach and the philosophy of ‘fail, fail fast and learn more,’ Prescient Surgical came up with a Sterilization Irrigation Solution. This technology helps with wound retraction and protection, while the active clearance therapy fights contamination.
For explanation of how the device works, go to the video below.
Their clinical trial resulted in 60 percent lower infection rate in 100 people.
