The Pantheris system
can not only spot blockages in blood vessels, but it can help
doctors shave them away as well
The impact of ever-miniaturizing electronics can be
felt right across the spectrum of technological advancement, but
as we are beginning to see, one place where it can have a truly
profound impact is in the human body. The latest example of this
is a tiny camera no bigger than a grain of salt, which can be
fixed to the end of a catheter and fed into arteries to provide
surgeons tasked with removing plaque a live view from within.
The buildup of plaque inside blood vessels can lead
to all sorts of health problems, the most extreme of which are
life-threatening events like heart attacks and strokes. Doctors
try to intervene before things get this bad by cutting plaque
from the artery to improve blood flow, after first imaging the
clogged vessel using techniques like x-ray to size up the job at
hand.
But the trouble with this approach is that it only
provides doctors with a cross-section view of the vessel. You
could think of it like trying to clear a blockage in a pipe
while only being able to see that pipe from the side. But
lately, scientists are coming up with tiny technologies that
allow us to venture inside for a look around.
Earlier this year we reported on a new 3D-printing
technique that allowed scientists to produce a
complex optical lens system for medical imaging that was
around the size of a grain of salt and could be loaded into a
syringe. And back in 2014, scientists developed a tiny
catheter-based sensor that could provide a real-time view
from within blood vessels to offer doctors a better vantage
point.
And now, this approach is finding its way into the
clinic as part of real-world procedures. The Pantheris
Lumivascular atherectomy system device one ups the
aforementioned solutions because it not only provides live
images from inside, but doctors can use it to clear out the
vessels at the same time.
After being fed through an incision in the groin,
Pantheris uses optical coherence tomography (OCT), a
medical-imaging technique that relies on light waves to gather
high-res images from within biological material, to provide
doctors with a live view from inside the artery. Simultaneously,
doctors can engage a cutting mechanism that is also fixed to its
tip to shave off plaque as needed, using the real-time images
for guidance.
After it received FDA approval back in March,
doctors at UC San Diego Health have used Pantheris on ten
patients. Most recently, it was deployed to clear an artery of a
patient with severe scar tissue and buildup of plaque at a
previously treated site. With the blockage located in his right
leg, prior to treatment the patient had trouble walking as a
result of limited blood flow to his calf muscle. But following
the successful procedure, the patient is now able to walk
several miles at a time.
"He was a good candidate for the new image-guided
catheter approach," says Mitul Patel, MD, cardiologist at UC San
Diego Health. "The device allowed for excellent visualization
inside his leg artery as we removed only the diseased tissue."
You can watch the device in action in this video.