Covidien Showcases Lung Cancer Detection System

There were some rather interesting exhibits at AdvaMed 2013: The Medtech Conference.

Scotland’s economic development executives used miniature stuffed dragons to attract participants to their booth, while I Heart Guts lured passers-by with its assortment of T-shirts and plush organs (the heart is a big seller, particularly around Valentine’s Day). The folks at Business Intelligence Associates Inc., meanwhile, garnered attention for their collection of baseball hats and stuffed monkeys (bearing the appropriate company swag, of course).

Covidien plc’s exhibit was much less conspicuous, though. The Dublin, Ireland-based company maintained a clean, somewhat sterile booth with only a single diagnostic machine as its focus: the SuperDimension Electromagnetic Navigation Bronchoscopy system. The lung cancer detection device – in clinical use for roughly eight years – is the first to employ a minimally invasive approach to accessing the lungs, according to Covidien.

Covidien showcased its SuperDimension ENB system throughout the conference, providing occasional demonstrations to interested attendees. The system uses a patient’s natural airway access of the lungs to safely locate and more easily obtain a tissue sample of a lesion, even in hard-to-reach areas of the lung.

“CT screening has opened the door to the detection of many abnormalities within the lung, making it possible to find cancers in an earlier stage,” said Sandeep Khandhar, M.D., chief of thoracic surgery and director of the Thoracic Oncology program at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, Va. “Traditionally, bronchoscopy and needle biopsies through the skin have been used to make definitive diagnoses. These procedures can be imprecise or unecessarily invasive. With the technology used in the SuperDimension system, physicians are able to navigate directly to a lesion and take a biopsy to help determine whether it is benign or cancerous and treat it sooner. An earlier, accurate diagnosis may allow for minimally invasive therapeutic approaches with significantly shorter hospitalization and recovery times allowing patients to get back to living their lives faster – this is really where the future of surgery is headed.”

This past spring, the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP) included the SuperDimension system in its clinical practice guidelines. More than 40,000 patients have undergone a SuperDimension ENB procedure at hundreds of medical facilities worldwide. The procedure is most commonly performed by a specialty physician such as a pulminologist or thoracic surgeon, and is completed in 30-60 minutes.

“At Covidien, we’re dedicated to improving the diagnostic process for patients who may suffer from pulmonary disease,” noted Michael Minette, vice president of Covidien’s Interventional Lung Solutions. “By offering a procedure that has the ability to examine parts of the lungs that were previously unreachable in a minimally invasive manner, physicians can now make earlier, more informed decisions about a patient’s care.”

The ACCP’s decision to include the SuperDimension in its clinical practice guidelines followed an April decision by Covidien to partner with Iowa-based VIDA Diagnostics to couple itss i-Logic lung navigation system, which provides minimally-invasive access to lung-based lesions and lymph nodes, with VIDA’s Apollo imaging data analysis product. Covidien said the collaboration is a sign of the two companies’ commitment to early detection, evaluation and treatment of all types of lung disease.