Anaheim, CA – March 2, 2015—ClearFlow Inc., a medical device company based in Anaheim, CA, is currently exhibiting its innovative PleuraFlow® Active Clearance Technology® System at the 34th annual Association of Physician Assistants in Cardiovascular Surgery (APACVS) meeting in Las Vegas. PleuraFlow will also be displayed at the Maquet Medical Systems USA booth through March 4th. Maquet is the exclusive distributor of ClearFlow’s PleuraFlow System in the USA.
The PleuraFlow System uses a first of its kind technology to enable caregivers to proactively keep chest drainage tubes clear of blood clotting after heart surgery.
“We understand the crucial role physician assistants play in the operating room during cardiovascular and cardiothoracic procedures,” said ClearFlow President & CEO, Paul Molloy. “It makes sense for us to be able to share our pioneering solution for chest tube clogging with the very people who so often have to deal with the problem. It’s particularly rewarding to be featured within Maquet’s powerful cardiovascular devices portfolio. We share Maquet’s goals of improving patient outcomes and reducing hospital costs through the use of leading-edge technologies, as well as its passion for dialoguing directly with physician assistants, so this is very synergistic.”
A common issue in hospitals, chest tube obstruction is known to occur in 36% of heart surgery patients, and nearly one in five can have some form of complication that includes the need to perform subsequent re-operation or interventions to remove blood, blood clot or bloody fluid from the pericardial or pleural spaces after cardiac surgery. These complications are referred to as Retained Blood Syndrome (RBS).
Procedures to remove retained blood are the most common invasive reinterventions after heart surgery and postoperative atrial fibrillation is the most common complication after heart surgery. Recent results reported from a large German heart center showed that PleuraFlow significantly lowered these common and expensive hospital complications.
The PleuraFlow Active Clearance Technology System is approved for use in the U.S., Europe, Australia, Brazil, and Canada, and has either cleared or Is pending clearance in over a dozen more countries.