Beijing, China – From August 17 to August 20, MicroPort Endovascular (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. ("MicroPort® Endovascular") attended the 2017 Vascular Intervention of Peking University and hosted an academic salon themed on "'Ahead of the Arch' — a Discussion of the Endovascular Treatment Strategy for the Arch Disease." The conference provided an academic platform for clinicians to exchange ideas, solve puzzles and share knowledge.
The academic salon was co-chaired by Professor Xiaoming Zhang of Peking University People's Hospital, Professor Xiaoyong Huang of Beijing Anzhen Hospital of Capital Medical University, and Professor Bao Liu of Peking Union Medical College Hospital. Professor Xiaoyong Huang, Professor Bao Liu, Professor Mingyao Luo of Fuwai Hospital of Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Professor Huimin Xu of Shanxi Dayi Hospital, Professor Qingle Li of Peking University People's Hospital, and Professor Zhanfeng Sun of the Second Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University delivered speeches about the clinical experience of aortic arch treatment in terms of treatment strategies, treatment advancement and requirement for devices.
With the rapid development of endovascular repair technologies, TEVAR treatment of aortic diseases has been proved safe and effective. Due to the complex aortic arch anatomy, there remain many challenges in using TEVAR to treat aortic arch diseases especially those involving the great vessels of the arch, such as how to cope with various types of the arch and variant anatomy of the aortic arch, as well as to manage blood supply of the branches. To meet the clinical needs, MicroPort® Endovascular developed Castor™ Branched Aortic Stent-Graft System ("Castor®") and Hercules™ Low Profile Thoracic Stent-Graft for the treatment of aortic arch.
In the endovascular treatment of aortic arch, the physicians will first judge the length of proximal landing zone, the location of primary and re-entry tear, access artery condition, and blood supply of the branches. For the aortic arch lesions with landing zone less than 15mm, involving aortic wall and with narrow access artery, they have higher demand for stent grafts in terms of stent graft design, ability of crossing the arch, importability, compliance, tapered, length and etc. Both Castor® and Hercules™ Low Profile Thoracic Stent-Graft adopt the arch with a soft sheath. The stent graft is delivered and deployed under the protection of the soft sheath, which improves the traceability across the arch as well as the stability during deployment due to less stress incurred by the soft sheath when crossing the arch. In addition, Hercules™ Low Profile Thoracic Stent-Graft can be used in introducing vessel with diameter as low as 6mm, and such requirement can be further lowered to 5mm for healthy and elastic introducing vessel, making it a unique advantage among Asian female patients. Castor® is the world's first branch stent with unibody design. It features good long-term anti-fatigue performance. Its tapered design, 5-30mm branch back removal length and multi-dimensional rotation angle of the branch ensure that Castor® could fit various forms of aortic arch dissection to meet the demand of most patients.
In the end of the salon, MicroPort® Endovascular displayed Castor® and its simulator, and several experts in attendance expressed their expectation on Castor®'s clinical performance after using its simulator. MicroPort® Endovascular President Zhenghua Miao said: "Castor® provides a creative solution that makes the delivery and positioning of unibody branch stent much easier and features low occurrence of endoleak and good patency in branch vessel. As it is launched in China, we believe it will provide ingenious, accurate and safe clinical experience for physicians and benefit more patients with aortic diseases as well."