Octocon: Vascular stapler | Coronary artery bypass grafting without stopping the heartbeat
Coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) is one of the effective treatments for myocardial ischemia caused by coronary heart disease. The surgical method is to use arteries or veins from other parts of the patient's body to supply blood to the distal end of the narrowed coronary artery. During the operation, a section of normal blood vessel is removed from the patient, one end is connected to the ascending aorta, and the other end is connected to the distal side of the narrowed coronary artery. Because this surgical method is like building a bridge, it is figuratively called "coronary artery bypass grafting."
Currently, coronary artery bypass grafting is the "gold standard" for treating advanced coronary artery disease, and it can provide more lasting results than PCI surgery. However, today's coronary artery bypass grafting is more of an open surgery that requires pausing the heartbeat. Although more minimally invasive endoscopic surgery has been carried out in some hospitals, the operation is difficult, and even with the da Vinci surgical robot, it is impossible to achieve endoscopic and non-extracorporeal circulation (non-stop heartbeat). The main reason why endoscopic non-stop heartbeat coronary artery bypass grafting cannot be popularized is: how to simply and reliably suture the graft vessels to the aorta and coronary arteries. To solve this problem, OctoVascular has developed an autonomously aligned arteriovascular stapler, the Octocon, which makes fully endoscopic, non-extracorporeal circulation coronary artery bypass grafting possible.
OctoconOctocon is a fully automatic vascular stapler that can quickly and reliably anastomose the graft vessels, aorta and coronary arteries, completely solving the traditional complex manual suturing problem and transforming coronary artery bypass surgery from open-chest surgery to minimally invasive laparoscopic surgery.
Octocon consists of a delivery system and staplers, which are somewhat similar to traditional tubular staplers in the surgical field. Octocon staplers are divided into bridge vessel staplers and aortic (or coronary) staplers. The two staples can be aligned autonomously through the buckles on the staples, and communication ensures that the staples can be tightly fitted and fixed.
The sharp barbs on the anastomotic staples can be firmly fixed on the blood vessels to ensure that the fixed point does not leak.
Delivery System The Octocon delivery system can repeatedly load staples and firmly fix the staples on the blood vessels.
In just three steps, the graft vessel and the aorta (or coronary artery) can be anastomosed together using the delivery system.