IsoFlow Catheter Gets FDA Approval Delivers Cancer Medications Directly to the Targeted Area or Tumor

Calling the interventional oncologist or radiologist to help out with this procedure using a catheter. I have done a an interview not too long ago with Dr. Bart Muhs from Yale about how it works with routing the catheter. If you watch the video, you will see some of the same with computerized 3D routing needed to map the route the catheter takes through the body. With this procedure, cancerous areas, such as a tumor can be targeted without exposing the entire body to a drug, again depending on the area needing treatment. I would say it certainly looks like it could make chemotherapy a bit easier if the medication did not require circulating through your entire body and the cancer was limited to one specific target. If you want to learn a bit more on how catheters are routed through the body, use the link below.

Interview with Bart E. Muhs, M.D., Yale School of Medicine – Aneurysm Repair Surgery

In watching the video the catheter also provides an over ride for blood to continue to flow around the affected area while the drug treatment is being administered. If there isn’t one already, I think this truly has to be called a “smart catheter” for more reasons than one. BD

Vascular Designs, a San Jose-based medical device company, just announced that its new IsoFlow Catheter got marketing clearance from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) to deliver medicine directly to a targeted area of the body. The IsoFlow, therefore, becomes the latest medical device to try and tackle diseases like cancer in the most direct way possible.

Vascular Designs claims the new catheter will let doctors send more medicine directly to an affected area. By targeting a disease more directly, there's a chance that a patient can be cured more quickly. It's an idea we've seen before with larger medical devices, like the "Cyber Knife" from AccuRay, also based in the Silicon Valley. By targeting a tumor - and just that specific area - with a laser, a once-complicated operation can turn into an outpatient procedure.