| Project Detail |
Monitoring artery stents in real time
Peripheral artery disease is associated with narrowing of the blood vessels and reduced blood flow due to atherosclerosis or plaque buildup. Treatment involves the implantation of stents, but in 20 % of cases, the stent will reclog, leading to significant morbidity. Funded by the European Innovation Council, the StentGuard project introduces an implantable sensor system that can accurately diagnose vessel clogging in real time. It renders traditional clinical check-ups obsolete by allowing patients to monitor the status of their stents at a low cost. Importantly, the information can be processed by non specialist medical practitioners, facilitating the prompt diagnosis of restenosis, which improves patient health and reduces healthcare costs.
Globally, over 237 million people suffer from peripheral artery disease (PAD), an abnormal narrowing of the arteries. The implantation of stents (spiral wire protheses) is the first-line therapy for PAD with ~ 3.5M stents implanted worldwide every year. Restenosis, the gradual reclogging
of the blood vessel after stent implantation, is a major problem leading to high morbidity and mortality which occurs within 6 years after implantation in ~23 % of all cases and is often detected when it is too late. More frequent surveillance of PAD patients to avoid unnecessary amputations
and death is an unmet clinical challenge. VesselSens is developing the StentGuard, a smart therapeutic monitoring device that enables rapid, low cost, early diagnosis of restenosis non-invasively and reliably. This device allows stent monitoring at high frequencies with low cost by
non-specialist medical practitioners solving the problem of unchecked disease progression and saving the EU economy over €1bn/ year. |
