Clinical need
Every year, over 6 million patients in the US undergo minimally invasive sinus and larynx procedures. Many of these procedures are in difficult-to-reach areas in the nose or throat, like the frontal sinus walls or the base of the tongue. Surgeons will generally need to use endoscopes, a thin tube, to access and treat these areas. However, many existing tools fall short.
challenge in sinus surgeries
Limitations of traditional endoscopes
Rigid endoscopes : Can’t bend to navigate into confined spaces, forcing surgeons to switch tools or resort to open surgery, raising risks for patients and tripling procedure time.
Soft endoscopes : Offer better reach but lack the applied force and precision needed for accurate dissection, especially in tougher tissues such as bone or tumors. In addition, they often require two surgeons to operate simultaneously, increasing both complexity and cost.
challenge in larynx surgeries
Limitations of existing endoscopes
Soft endoscopes suffer from reduced tip stability during surgeries at the base of the tongue.
Treating tumors at the base of the tongue with a flexible endoscope is technically demanding. Surgeons must retroflex the scope to extreme angles, which creates line-of-sight limitations and often requires side-firing or angled fibers to reach the target. At these positions, natural surgeon tremor is amplified by the long lever arm of the scope, and current flexible systems offer only limited angulation, leading to instability of the tip and reduced precision of laser delivery.
Rigid endoscopes require general anesthesia and inpatient procedures for vocal cord injections.
These procedures are usually performed with a rigid suspension laryngoscope under direct visualization in the operating room. While office-based injections with flexible scopes are possible in some patients, rigid instruments are still needed in many cases because of limited anatomical access, the need for precise control, and the airway protection provided by general anesthesia.
Discover our solution: a variable stiffness endoscope
To address unmet clinical needs in ENT surgeries in difficult-to-reach areas, we are developing an ENTscope with controllable stiffness.