Cappella: Can a New Twist On An Old Idea Solve the Bifurcation Challenge?

Article preview from IN VIVO-  May, 2010

Device companies large and small have failed repeatedly in efforts to address bifurcations, which remain one of the largest unmet opportunities in cardiology. Cappella thinks it can solve the problem with a device that's a new version of an old idea, reversing current protocol to treat the side branch first.

Cappella: Can a New Twist On An Old Idea Solve the Bifurcation Challenge?

Article preview from IN VIVO-  May, 2010

** Bifurcations have long presented device companies and interventionalists with difficult technical and clinical challenges that neither has been able to successfully overcome.

** The result: there is no effective dedicated bifurcation stent available, although this remains a large market opportunity, leaving clinicians to adapt traditional devices to this challenging anatomy with less than optimal outcomes.

** Cappella is combining a design and a material – a self-expanding nitinol stent – that have proved problematic in past coronary devices to develop a next-generation bifurcation stent.

** The company is betting that by providing interventionalists with an effective tool that they have, until now, lacked to treat bifurcations, these clinicians will be willing to effectively reverse their current practice patterns by treating the side branch first, enabling them to more effectively treat current patients and potentially expand this market.

Innovation in medical devices tends to be more evolutionary than revolutionary, with next-generation products typically featuring subtle advances on existing technology. An exception to that model is when first-generation devices offer less than adequate solutions to clinical needs. In those cases, next-generation devices often represent significantly different approaches in addressing a particular therapeutic challenge, resulting in a major technological shift.

- Stephen Levin

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