Johnson & Johnson’s subsidiary Ethicon has reported positive results from two clinical studies conducted using its Echelon Flex Powered Staplers and new lung model, respectively, for thoracic surgery procedures in lung cancer cases.
Data, presented at the 26th European Society of Thoracic Surgeons meeting, demonstrated lower rates of bleeding complications, improved patients outcomes and decreased hospital costs.
The first real-world study compared the effect of powered staplers with that of manual devices during a video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) for the cancer.
Published in Advances in Therapy, findings showed an almost 50% decrease in bleeding complications when Ethicon’s powered staplers were used.
In addition, total hospital costs were cut down by 10%, and patients were discharged one day sooner from the hospital.
Ethicon Thoracic Surgery senior medical director Edmund Kassis said: “We continue to take aim at critical clinical issues such as haemostasis complications through the development of innovative devices like Echelon Flex Powered Staplers and the generation of meaningful clinical and real-world evidence that fills knowledge gaps, validates outcomes and better informs everyday decision making.”
The second study involved the company’s new ex-vivo lung model that successfully mimicked a person’s breathing under natural as well as ventilated settings.
Ethicon designed the new model to simulate various physiologic environments which are experienced by an isolated lung in the perioperative period.
This is intended to facilitate monitoring for researchers to determine the mechanism and causes behind air leaks, which is a post-operative complication known to take place in 24% of lobectomies.
The complication is said to lead to about a two times increase in hospital mortality.
Results from the lung model study, published in IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, are expected to allow researchers to explore potential approaches under clinically relevant conditions to decrease air leaks risk.
