Medtronic plc has announced the US launch of the Arc support catheter, the most navigable, 6F tapered support catheter available. Developed to improve delivery of Medtronic’s Solitaire stent retriever, the Arc support catheter provides the fastest route to restoration of blood flow in patients with complex anatomy suffering acute ischaemic stroke. The Arc catheter series received US Food and Drug Administration 510(K) clearance in July 2015.
“The Arc support catheter establishes a new level of navigation performance for our most challenging patients,” said Satoshi Tateshima, professor of Neuro-Interventional Radiology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). “When combined with Medtronic’s Solitaire stent retriever, this new system allows physicians to treat more challenging acute ischaemic stroke patients and helps broaden our ability to service a larger segment of the population who suffer from this disease.”
Recently, the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association (AHA/ASA) published new stroke treatment guidelines that recommend the use of stent retriever technology in conjunction with the current standard of care, IV-tPA for eligible patients. The AHA/ASA guidelines are based on a panel of experts’ analysis of the results from five global clinical trials published in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) that found the addition of stent retriever technology to current medical therapy such as IV-tPA, has a therapeutic benefit over medical therapy alone.
The primary stent retriever studied in the five global trials was the Solitaire device. Three of the five trials—SWIFT PRIME, REVASCAT and EXTEND-IA—studied the Solitaire stent retriever exclusively.
“The Arc support catheter will complement our Solitaire stent retriever and demonstrates our organisation’s focus on the treatment of stroke,” said Brett Wall, president of the Neurovascular business, which is part of the Restorative Therapies Group at Medtronic. “The device also represents our organisation’s ability to continue to deliver innovative technology.”
The Arc support catheter includes a patent-pending manufacturing technology called a “progressive coil design” which gives the device its unique performance features.
