Overview
All medical specialties that involve surgery have an overarching goal to continue to develop new technologies and methodologies that allow them to perform more effective surgeries with less and less collateral damage to surrounding, healthy tissue. Procedures that utilize such methods and technology are referred to as Minimally Invasive Surgery, or MIS.
Conventional, invasive surgery typically involves a large incision through healthy tissue in order to allow access to the target tissue. MIS avoids this by taking one of two alternate approaches. First, wherever possible, the bodies natural orifices are used, such as in the case of performing a bronchial tube (lung) examination or a colonoscopy. Second, if this is not an option, in many cases a single, large conventional incision can still be avoided through the use of multiple small incisions and endoscopic instrumentation. In this form of MIS, typically 3-5 very small incisions – referred to as “ports” – are made in the vicinity of the target tissue. One port allows access for an endoscope (thin tubular camera), and the others for endoscopic instruments (long, thin instruments specially-designed for operating through small incisions). The surgeon views the surgical site on a video monitor, and performs the actions necessary by manipulating the endoscopic instruments.
The benefits of MIS over conventional, open surgery are significant – significantly less patient trauma and pain, less pain medication, fewer complications, shorter hospital stays and ultimately lower costs.
Medical devices used in MIS surgery include a wide variety endoscopes; a vast multitude of endoscopic hand instruments – both disposable and reusable – designed for general purpose use, such as for biopsy, tissue dissection or suturing, or for specific MIS variants of common procedures; catheter-based electrical, microwave, cryogenic and laser-based tissue ablation (destruction) tools for endoscopic tissue ablation, such as for the MIS removal of non-operable cancerous tumors; and sophisticated robotic systems that enable complex procedures to be done endoscopically.
Market Opportunity
Kairos estimates the current market size for MIS across all specialties is approximately $1.5 billion. MIS techniques currently enjoy very high penetration in laparoscopic (abdominal) and gynecological surgeries, and are continuing to emerge in arenas such as urology (MIS treatments for enlarged prostates), oncology (MIS tumor ablation) and cardiac surgery (beating heart bypass surgery).
Kairos Focus
Kairos’ focus is in those areas of MIS which relate to treating critical care patients in a hospital setting, with devices and systems that have a significant disposables component. The primary focus areas are disposable endoscopic hand instruments, both general and procedure-specific, and catheter-based tissue ablation technologies. |
