ST. LOUIS, Aug. 27, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Stereotaxis, Inc. (NASDAQ:STXS) and Westmead Hospital in Australia today announced findings of a recent study comparing the stability of a Niobe(R) remote magnetic navigation system catheter group and a manually controlled catheter group in a validated cardiac wall motion simulator.
"The Niobe system has long demonstrated an enhanced safety profile in comparison to conventional ablations, but its efficacy with lesion creation in highly mobile cardiac regions has not been adequately studied," said Pramesh Kovoor, M.D., Ph.D., Director of Cardiac Services at Westmead Hospital and Associate Professor at the University of Sydney. "We were pleasantly surprised with the results of our research, which provided strong evidence of faster, deeper lesion formation utilizing the Niobe system, due to constant catheter contact in the presence of simulated heart wall motion. As a practitioner, this translates into the potential for more precise, effective ablations in unstable regions of the heart, which could lead to improved patient outcomes and shorter procedure times."
During the study, the research team performed a total of 60 ablations in a myocardial phantom (gel tank), which was previously validated in animal studies. Radiofrequency ablations were delivered both by an irrigated catheter controlled by the Niobe magnetic navigation system as well as a manually controlled irrigated catheter, and catheter position was confirmed by real-time visualization. The ablation surface of the phantom was put into motion in order to simulate cardiac wall movement. Researchers observed lateral sliding (5.2mm) in the manual catheter group during surface movement, while the magnetically guided catheter group maintained stable focal contact with no lateral movement (0mm). As a result, lesion dimensions using the Niobe system were larger, deeper and formed sooner compared to manual control. Complete study results are available online in the Journal of Interventional Cardiac Electrophysiology (DOI: 10.1007/s10840-015-0023-3). Additional study details as well as a video of the study can be found at www.stereotaxis.com/lesion_westmead/.