Johnson & Johnson’ Ethicon business is promoting the results of a head-to-head study between an Ethicon surgical stapler and a Medtronic stapler system.

Ethicon’s Echelon Flex GST system had a 20% staple-line air leak rate when tested out on pig lungs under modeled physiologic breathing conditions, versus a 44% rate for Medtronic’s Endo Gia with Tri-Staple technology.

Ethicon funded the research, which is being announced this week at the 2019 Society of Thoracic Surgeons annual meeting in San Diego.

Surgeons use Ethicon’s GST system to deploy uniform closed staple line heights.

“The evidence continues to mount that not all surgical staplers are created equally when it comes to reducing costly and serious complications associated with thoracic surgery,” said Dr. Edmund Kassis, a study co-author and senior medical director for thoracic surgery at Ethicon.

“The selection of surgical stapler could lead to better outcomes, lower costs and reduced length of stay for patients. Surgeons have an important choice to make,” Kassis said in a news release.

The study authors – led by Dr. Seth D. Force, chief of General Thoracic Surgery at Emory Healthcare in Atlanta – published the research online in December in the peer-reviewed journal “Medical Devices: Evidence and Research.”