Article preview from Start-Up - October, 2012
A surgeon’s wish list for a dissection tool would likely include these four features: a superficial tissue hemostatic effect without deep tissue injury, frictionless cutting without distortion or sticking, on-demand rapid onset and offset of effect, and easy cleaning to maintain the pace of surgery. Domain Surgical Inc. thinks its FMwand Ferromagnetic Surgical System meets these needs. “The device is based on the principal of ferromagnetic induction, whereby radiofrequency energy is passed around a loop of wire to produce heat that is capable of cutting and coagulating tissue.
Article preview from Start-Up - October, 2012
A surgeon’s wish list for a dissection tool would likely include these four features: a superficial tissue hemostatic effect (coagulation) without deep tissue injury, frictionless cutting without distortion or sticking, on-demand rapid onset and offset of effect, and easy cleaning to maintain the pace of surgery. The FMwand Ferromagnetic Surgical System from Domain Surgical Inc. meets all those needs, according to founder, president, and CEO David McNally. “We are able to minimize tissue damage, yet control bleeding,” he says of the device that is based on the principal of ferromagnetic induction, whereby radiofrequency (RF) energy is passed around a loop of wire (a ferromagnetic-coated electrical conductor) to produce heat that is capable of cutting and coagulating tissue.
McNally recalls a conversation he had with a local manufacturer’s representative recently about the challenges of pioneering a new technology. The rep said that if ferromagnetic technology had been the gold standard for the past 80 years, instead of electrosurgery, and electrosurgery was now trying to unseat Domain’s technology, “the surgeons would look at us like we’re crazy,” McNally says.
McNally emphasizes that the FMwand does not use RF energy to heat the tissue, but rather to produce an electromagnetic field that excites the ferromagnetic domains in the alloy, thus causing heating in the coating on the tip of the handpiece. “Unlike existing high-frequency RF devices used in surgery, our device does not pass the electrical energy through the tissue itself. We are incising tissue and treating it with pure heat,” he states. “RF is the energy source, but not the energy that acts on the tissue.”
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