Bifogade filer
Kurs & Likviditet
Prenumeration
Beskrivning
Land | Sverige |
---|---|
Lista | First North Stockholm |
Sektor | Hälsovård |
Industri | Medicinteknik |
In a collaboration between ProstaLund and C-Medical Urologi Carlanderska, ProstaLund´s Schelin Catheter™ has successfully been introduced as a tool to provide local anesthesia in a sterile way before water vapor therapy for benign prostate enlargement. After administration of mepivacaine through the Schelin Catheter™ the procedures were substantially painless for the patients.
At first glance the Schelin Catheter™ looks like a normal urinary catheter but it has an extra channel through which a thermoplastic cannula is inserted. The cannula is connected to a syringe and thus drugs can be injected directly into the prostate in a sterile way. The Schelin Catheter™ is since many years used as standard before thermotherapy treatment with CoreTherm®. Then local anesthesia with adrenaline is administered into the prostate through the catheter and this contributes to both a substantially painless treatment and a reduced blood flow in the prostate, which in turn has shortened the thermotherapy treatment to today's approximately 10-15 minutes.
Water vapor therapy is a promising method for treating benign prostate enlargement (BPE). Admittedly, studies show that it does not provide the same symptom relief as thermotherapy with CoreTherm®, but the method can complement CoreTherm® and be used for patients with really small prostates or when the anatomy of the prostate includes a so-called third lobe.
Until today, pain relief before water vapor therapy is usually either local anesthesia injected through the rectum or that patients are general anesthetized during the procedure. The former entails a significant risk of severe infections, and the latter is also associated with risks and takes up considerable resources.
With the Schelin Catheter™, the prostate can effectively be anaesthetized in a sterile way before water vapor therapy, thus avoiding the risk of pathogens from the rectum enter the body at the time of injection. At the same time, the patient does not need to be general anesthetized and can go home immediately after treatment. During the water vapor therapy procedures at C-Medical Urologi Carlanderska in Gothenburg, the local anesthetics administered to the first patients through the Schelin Catheter™ provided excellent pain relief. Just like in CoreTherm treatments the procedures were essentially painless for the patients. It took less than 4 minutes per patient to provide anesthetics with the Schelin Catheter™.
The number of water vapor therapy procedures performed worldwide is unknown, but it is estimated that about 25,000 were performed in the US alone and a few hundred in the Nordic countries in 2021.
It is likely that the Schelin Catheter™ also can be used with great success to provide local anesthesia for other prostate treatments and to administer medicines directly into the prostate for diseases such as benign prostate enlargement, prostatitis, and prostate cancer.
ProstaLund's CEO, Johan Wennerholm comments: "It is fantastic that the Schelin Catheter™ without compromising effectivity can decrease risks for BPE patients going through water vapor therapy. Even if the result was expected, it feels good to have it confirmed. The fact that we can improve another method with components of our own method shows the strength and scalability of our own method, CoreTherm® Concept. The approved utility patent on the Schelin Catheter™ in China that we announced a couple of weeks ago makes us feel confident to improve our competitors' methods. After all, in our opinion, our method is the best.”