New System Could Hold Promise for Patients Suffering from Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension

SoniVie’s recent clinical trial of TIVUS (therapeutic intravascular ultrasound) shows encouraging results for patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). “The TROPHY1 study was our first human study in patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension,” said Charles Carignan, MD, CEO of SoniVie, in an interview with MD+DI. The results are from a 6-month follow-up for the 23 enrolled WHO Class 3 patients in the United States, Europe, and Israel. TIVUS is a catheter that goes either through the jugular vein or the femoral vein into the right side of the heart and passes through the heart into the pulmonary artery. The procedure takes place in a typical cardiac catheterization lab, and the whole procedure takes about 30 minutes more time than a traditional right heart catheterization procedure. TIVUS has three ultrasound arrays at the distal tip, which create sound waves that heat up the nerves around the pulmonary artery. This causes those nerves to necrose and die, which then interrupts the signaling around the artery. “What we believe happens then is that you lose the sympathetic output, so the neurochemicals that would normally be released from those nerves that cause narrowing of the artery are not released,” said Carignan. “This allows the artery to relax and that then reduces the pressure in the pulmonary artery and that reduces the work that the right side of ...
Source: MDDI - Category: Medical Devices Authors: Tags: Business Source Type: news