HEALTH AND BEAUTY CLOSE-UP-22 September 2008-Medtronic Debuts Discyphor Direct Catheter System(C)2008 - CloseUpMedia - newsdesk@closeupmedia.com

Medical technology company Medtronic has announced the U.S. launch of the Discyphor Direct Catheter System, the second-generation catheter system

In a release, the company noted:

The Discyphor Direct Catheter System provides additional information to help identify which disc is causing a patient's pain. More than 100,000 patients annually undergo spinal surgery for discogenic low back pain in the United States1, but patient satisfaction from such surgeries is mixed.

"With the Discyphor Direct Catheter System, we are empowering physicians to independently assess discs to determine the source of a patient's back pain while delivering many enhancements over our first-generation product," said Robert White, president of Kyphon and Interspinous Process Decompression Devices for the Spinal and Biologics at Medtronic, which markets the Discyphor product line. "Both patients and physicians will benefit from this new system because of its improved ease of use and a needle that is designed with an atraumatic or blunt tip."

With the Discyphor Direct Catheter System, physicians use Medtronic's Functional Anaesthetic Discography (F.A.D. ) Procedure that identifies a patient's discogenic pain by anesthetizing each suspect disc individually. This procedure differs from typical means of diagnosis such as imaging studies or provocative discography, which generates pain in an attempt to locate the suspected disc. The F.A.D. Procedure was introduced two years ago and has been used on more than 3,000 patients.

During the F.A.D. Procedure, a proprietary balloon catheter is anchored into discs suspected of causing pain, which allows injection of anesthetic while the patient is performing typical pain-eliciting activities. If the patient shows improved functional response to the anaesthetic injection, this allows physicians to make a more informed diagnosis of the source(s) of a patient's low back pain and may help them choose the optimal treatment option. The procedure also facilitates diagnosis of discogenic pain at multiple levels, one at a time, through use of multiple catheters.

While the procedure is often performed by pain management specialists, spine surgeons benefit from the diagnostic information to help determine the optimal treatment for their patients. Therefore, Medtronic will introduce the Discyphor Direct Catheter System to the spine surgeon community at the annual meeting of the North American Spine Society (NASS) in Toronto, Canada in October. A technical forum, during which the Discyphor Direct Catheter System will be discussed, will take place from 6:30-8:30 p.m. (Eastern) on October 15 at NASS.

The core balloon catheter technology was cleared for marketing in the United States in April 2005. Medtronic continues to conduct clinical studies to scientifically show the diagnostic utility of this procedure.

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