Fundamental technologies are still wanting to encourage the migration of surgeries to a single-incision approach. SurgiQuest has a proprietary platform that addresses a long list of limitations hampering surgical access through traditional trocars.
SurgiQuest Inc.
Article preview from Start Up - July, 2010
The members of the management team of SurgiQuest Inc. cut their teeth at United States Surgical (before it became part of Covidien Ltd.) in the infancy of laparoscopy. SurgiQuest founder and CEO Kurt Azarbarzin joined United States Surgical 22 years ago, working in manufacturing, research and development and quality assurance. Carlos Babini, SurgiQuest's EVP of sales and marketing, who joined United States Surgical more than 25 years ago, remembers the old days. "In 1988 when US Surgical first introduced the Endo Clip applier and other tools enabling laparoscopic gallbladder removal, we trained thousands of surgeons to perform a procedure for which there was no reimbursement and limited scientific data. The rest is history." Indeed, when a surgeon no longer needed to make a five to seven inch incision in a patient's belly, accessing the gallbladder through three or four small ports instead, patients who once spent four to six weeks recovering from an open surgery to remove the gallbladder were essentially able to return to normal activities the next day. Today, laparoscopic cholecystectomy is the standard way to remove the gallbladder; more than 90% of cases are done laparoscopically now, contributing to a $4.5 billion domestic laparoscopic surgery market, worth almost twice that globally.
Over the years, surgeons have pushed the minimally invasive surgery envelope, reducing the time required to safely perform lap choly and other laparoscopic surgeries and reducing the number of ports (the access points for a camera and hand instruments) from four to three, and sometimes two. Now, on the eve of a new era in single-incision laparoscopy, SurgiQuest hopes to accelerate the conversion of traditional laparoscopic surgeries – and open surgeries – to single-port surgeries with an innovative and highly differentiated access platform.
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Companies mentioned in this article:Companies mentioned in this article:
SurgiQuest Inc.
Covidien Ltd.
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