Applications:
Ablation Systems: MMS® designs and develops ablation systems that incorporate the components and unique capabilities of microwave technology, providing unparalleled performance and safety. Ablation applications include, but are not limited to, blood vessels, the heart, liver, kidneys and prostate. Opportunities for application of MMS® technology to set new standards of care in these applications are many.
Cardiac Ablation: The most advanced program to date, incorporating MMS® technology, is a system for the cardiac ablation treatment of abnormal rhythms, known as arrhythmias.
Cardiac arrhythmias are caused by abnormal electrical activity in the heart, resulting in heartbeats that are too fast, too slow, or simply irregular. Some arrhythmias are merely annoying, but many are potentially life threatening, and can result in painful palpitations, embolisms, cardiac arrest, stroke or sudden death.
Catheter ablation of the heart is used to treat a variety of arrhythmias, and is accomplished by threading a thin catheter through a major blood vessel into the heart under X-ray guidance. The surgeon then “ablates” or creates a “lesion” to destroy the specific heart tissue causing the irregular activity.
In the attempt to treat heart arrhythmias, numerous technologies have been introduced into clinical practice for the ablation of cardiac tissue. The technologies include Radio Frequency (“RF”), Ultrasound, and Cryoablation, all of which have been able to ablate the target tissue with varying degrees of success. Each of these systems employ conventional temperature sensors, such as thermocouples, thermisters, and fiber-optic thermo sensors. Such sensors are embedded in the catheter tip and can only measure the temperature of the catheter tip, and not the target tissue. The temperature of the target tissue during ablation is critical to the procedure -- too low will be unsuccessful, resulting in under-treatment. Too high can result in over-treatment, and can be dangerous to the patient.
When surface cooling is required, conventional sensors are unable to detect or measure the temperature of the target tissue.
In January 2007, MMS® entered into a joint venture with Advanced Cardiac Therapeutics, Inc., (“ACT”), headquartered in Laguna Beach, CA. MMS® licensed its technology to ACT to develop the first real-time, temperature- sensing, irrigated ablation catheter, using MMS®’ Monolithic Microwave Integrated Chip (“MMIC”) technology. The intent was to measure tissue temperature at a depth of 3mm, providing total lesion control to a surgeon/ electrophysiologist performing cardiac ablation with irrigation, or surface cooling.
Development of the integrated system has been a success (see the Press Release on this site’s NEWS Page). The system, TEMPASURE™, was created with MMS®’ proprietary radiometric chip technology, and integrated into a steerable, 2mm diameter RF ablation catheter. The catheter tip, or antenna, is common to both the transmit (heating) and the receive (temperature sensing) mode. TEMPASURE™ entered into human trials in 2011, with the first commercial market introduction expected in 2012.
On June 8, 2011, ACT announced that it had secured CE Mark approval for the TEMPASURE™ Cardiac Ablation Catheter.
In October 2007, Hansen Medical, a leader in robotic systems that aid in accurate positioning and control of catheter-based technologies, including the Sensei™ Robotic Catheter System, acquired specific rights to the TEMPASURE™ System for robotic applications.
More information about ACT and the TEMPASURE™ system with Veritas™ technology can be found at the links below
Advanced Cardiac Therapeutics, Inc corporate web site:
www.actmed.net
Animation of the technology
http://www.actmed.net/viewanimation.html
For furtherinformation, please contact MMS® at info@mms-llc.com