Patients today are living longer and healthier lives in large part due to advances in medical technology. Additionally, patients have become educated consumers in choosing their treatment alternatives. These trends have largely been driven by accessibility of information regarding medical treatments and by scientific advancements that provide less invasive alternatives to traditionally complex and invasive procedures and that provide new curative treatments. Stereotaxis is a leader in such advancements in the field of interventional medicine in cardiology.

Stereotaxis’ goal is to provide patients and their physicians with safe and effective, least invasive interventional solutions for complex and routine cardiology applications, by establishing magnetic, computerized treatment as a new standard of care.

• Arrhythmias: interventional electrophysiology diagnosis and treatment of complex arrhythmias such as atrial fibrillation and atrial flutter, as well as common arrhythmias such as supraventricular tachycardias.  
• Heart Failure: interventional procedures primarily for cardiac resynchronization therapy  
• Coronary Artery Disease: interventional procedures for reopening blocked arteries in coronary vessels with partial occlusions or chronic total occlusion

Stereotaxis’ technology is designed to provide physicians with the ability to conduct precise remotely controlled, image-guided computerized interventional procedures with greater efficiency, effectiveness and patient safety than conventional manual interventional techniques. The goal is to enhance patient safety by:

• Enabling shorter procedures, 
• Reducing exposure to X-ray radiation 
• Reducing contrast dyes injected into the patient’s blood vessels during procedures and  
• Reducing the risk of serious complications from perforation of blood vessels or heart tissue using GentleTouch™ technology.  
• Reducing the likelihood of referral to highly invasive open heart surgical procedures.  
• Making interventional, least invasive treatment of highly complex heart diseases, such as atrial fibrillation and chronic total occlusions in coronary arteries more readily available

Treating complex EP procedures requires very precise digital reconstructions (“maps”) of the cardiac anatomy. In order to create these maps, the tip of a catheter has to be accurately guided to more than a hundred different locations in a heart chamber. Stiff manual catheters can “tent” or distort the wall of the heart. In the worst cases, excessive force from the catheter can puncture or perforate the heart wall, a potentially lethal complication. Stereotaxis’ GentleTouch catheters are significantly softer than manual catheters. The soft touch of these catheters can reconstruct cardiac anatomy precisely without distorting the shape of the heart wall.

GentleTouch™ Catheter

Manual Catheter

Manual Stretching of the Heart Wall

Courtesy: Oklahoma University Medical Center
demonstrated in canine

The goal of Stereotaxis' GentleTouch™ technology is to contact the wall of the heart in an optimal way. Softer, more flexible catheters may reduce the chance of distorting or damaging the heart wall. By combining the benefits of precise, computer-aided magnetic guidance with gentle catheter contact, Stereotaxis believes that it has the potential to enable softer, safer interventional procedures with better outcomes and shorter patient recovery times. 

As noted, Stereotaxis’ technology is designed to enable patients to have access to important future interventional treatments that are currently unavailable or so complex that only a small number of physicians and hospitals provide such treatments with conventional methods. These include atrial fibrillation ablation, cardiac resynchronization therapy and treatment of multi-vessel and other complex coronary artery disease, including chronic total occlusions, or CTOs, that comprise chronically and fully blocked coronary arteries.

Stereotaxis’ computerized procedures utilize the technology of magnetics to allow the physician to have precise control of the tip of a magnetized catheter or guidewire and to allow the physician fully integrated access to the range of important imaging and other information tools that are used in interventional procedures. We believe that our technology addresses substantial limitations imposed by conventional manual technology on the effective, safe and efficient delivery of treatment to cardiology patients. Our technology may also enable patients who would otherwise be referred to highly invasive coronary artery bypass surgery to be treated through computerized interventional procedures. Further, we believe our technology has the potential to enable curative interventional treatments to patients suffering from atrial fibrillation or other arrhythmias who would otherwise have to rely on non-curative drug therapy that may only partly addresses their symptoms.