COVER STORY
KEVIN LADOW, MEDICAL PRODUCT MANAGER USA WEST AT JUNKOSHA, REVIEWS THE NEXT STEPS NEEDED BY END USERS AS PATIENT CARE CONTINUES TO TOP THE AGENDA FOR HEALTHCARE SETTINGS.
The Journey Towards Intelligent Catheters T
he journey towards intelligent catheters is an important one, both from the clinician’s and the patient’s perspective. Their development is necessary to accelerate the shift from costly, burdensome surgical treatments towards cost-effective and minimally invasive interventions. To treat a wider range of patients and types of disease, it is crucial to have smaller and more flexible, high signal capacity catheters at the surgery team’s disposal. This type of tool will provide surgeons with the highquality imaging to precisely identify patient anatomy to help maximise the safety and efficacy of the procedure.
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Decreasing the size and increasing the flexibility of these catheters will help the physician more effectively navigate demanding patient anatomy, resulting in efficient and accurate devices or therapeutic delivery. Together, these advancements result in tangible, direct benefits for the patients, such as greater access to safer, less invasive procedures, with quicker recovery times. Intelligent catheters, with new diagnostic and therapeutic capabilities, will enable the development of new, advanced therapies for diseases that are currently treated by complex surgical procedures. This will allow for more individuals to be treated and minimise risks, improving quality of life and reducing death rates for these patients. Intelligent catheters will allow a wider range of functions to be integrated into single, small devices in a cost-effective and industrially feasible manner. Since catheter-based procedures are typically done on an outpatient basis, they do not require an expensive OR suite or recovery in a hospital bed.
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