New Study Finds Significantly Improved Rates of Diagnosing Lung Cancer Utilizing Veran Medical’s Thoracic Navigation Technology

A newly published study that followed 50 patients referred for bronchoscopy or surgery demonstrated that a physician using Veran Medical’s thoracic navigation technology successfully and accurately diagnosed 83.3% of patients with suspicious peripheral lung nodules, which had previously been considered difficult to access. Interventional Pulmonologist Dr. Abhijit Raval at AnMed Health, a community hospital in Anderson, South Carolina followed these patients for two years, and the published study results are now available in Lung Cancer Management (http://www.futuremedicine.com/doi/abs/10.2217/lmt-2015-0007).

“The Veran technology has significantly increased our confidence to accurately reach smaller PPNs. The ability to collect staging samples and to accurately biopsy the lesion in a single procedure is very encouraging to streamline patient care,” said study author Dr. Abhijit Raval.

Published diagnostic yields vary depending on nodule location and size but range from 50-70% with traditional lung specialist tools. Veran Medical’s SPiN Thoracic Navigation System utilizes proprietary Always-On Tip Tracked® instruments with tiny electromagnetic sensors in the tips to safely and precisely navigate physicians to hard to reach targets. Published research confirms that those lung nodules move when a patient is routinely breathing —creating a moving target for the lung specialists trying to reach them. Unlike older navigation technology, Veran’s exclusive 4D inspiration/expiration respiratory gated technology compensates for this natural respiratory movement. Veran’s technology ensures physicians can confidently and accurately reach target nodules even if a patient coughs, moves, or simply breathes in and out during the procedure.

“The differences between older electromagnetic navigation technology that maps patients lungs based on total lung capacity (arms up, lungs full of air) and Veran’s more dynamic mapping system that enables respiratory gating are critical to achieve a more accurate representative location of the lesion.” said Dr. Raval. “Veran’s technology eliminates the documented inaccuracies of traditional Electromagnetic navigation systems that base their mapping on a single CT scan when the patient’s lungs are full of air.”

48 patients had a total of 61 lesions biopsied. 19 patients were diagnosed with malignant tumors that required therapy. More than half of the lesions accessed were less than 2cm in diameter.

“The evidence is clear that early diagnosis of lung cancer dramatically improves the chance of survival,” said Veran CEO Jason Pesterfield. “Veran’s SPiN Thoracic Navigation system and SPiNPerc are transforming the physician’s ability to accurately access and diagnose hard to reach Solitary Pulmonary Nodules (SPNs) and to provide cost-effective care for the 2.7 million SPNs found annually in the US.”

Encouragingly investigators documented a promising trend that diagnostic yields improved significantly (from 80% for first 25 patients to 87% for next 23 patients) due to a learning curve with the technology. One pneumothorax was noted with no additional complications reported.

Noting the high number of positive scans in the National Lung Screening Trial, study investigators reported that community hospitals will be challenged to provide a minimally invasive method to consistently reach these lesions and rule out cancer. “The new Veran mapping system that was evaluated in this study shows promise to help lung specialists meet this new challenge,” said Dr. Raval. “Veran’s system adds numerous new tools to the lung cancer diagnostic armamentarium, which now includes SPiNPerc, a navigated transthoracic needle that was released after the completion of our study.”