MORGANTOWN – Intermed Labs teamed with Marshall Health, West Virginia Junior College and Mon Health on Friday to test an innovative medical device aimed at making upper endoscopy procedures safer and easier.
The small device – we can’t describe it or show it because it’s still in development and patent pending – is designed to prevent hypoxia – low oxygen levels – in patients undergoing the procedure, said inventor Dr. M’hamed Turki, a Marshall Health gastroenterologist.
Hypoxia is a risk for patients with sleep apnea, or who are obese or have a short neck, he said. Hypoxia makes the procedure more complicated and time consuming and could lead to intubation (insertion of a breathing tube) which in turn requires more aggressive anesthesia.
Obese patients, Turki said, have a lot of extra, more lax tissue in the upper airway area that contributes to sleep apnea, where the airways collapse for short periods while the person is asleep. Sleeping under anesthesia produces the same “micro-events” where the airways collapse.
“We are trying to design a solution that will decrease the number of these events,” Turki said.
The device is small, can be 3D printed for the trials, is simple and can fit with the anatomy of every patient, he said. “I think this is what will make it easy for the user and the patient at the same time.”
The test took place inside WVJC’s mobile simulation lab in the parking lot outside Intermed’s new headquarters in the WVU Innovation Corp. building.
Intermed CEO Tom McClellan explained how the test came about.
Intermed has a new branch at Marshall University and Turki was the first doctor they met down there. The Intermed team traveled to Huntington several times and worked with the team there on this new device.
To perfect it, he said, they need to be able to evaluate the shape and design and potential problems. “That’s very hard to do on a live person, obviously.” And hard to do on cadavers, which are too stiff.
So Intermed reached out to West Virginia Junior College to see if they could use one WVJC’s lifelike mannequins from the schools mobile nursing lab – a 38-foot bus-like vehicle composed of two simulation hospital rooms and a control room, and outfitted with advanced equipment robotic mannequins, and now evolved to a mobile simulation lab.
WVJC CEO Chad Callen immediately agreed to not only provide the mannequin but the whole lab, McClellan said. “To get that sort of support and friendship for West Virginia is amazing.”
The doctors used the lab’s pregnant mannequin, Lucina. First they inserted the device attached to a bite block – used for upper endoscopies to keep patients from biting the endo tube and harming their teeth.
Then they worked on making sure they could monitor how the device would work. Justin Chambers, Intermed’s head of engineering, inserted a bore scope – a narrow endo tube with a flexible end and a camera, operated with a joystick – to go in alongside the endoscopy tube provided by Mon Health.
The camera view, McClellan said, would allow them to see how the device interacts with the trachea and esophagus and tongue and posterior pharynx. This in turn would show them what changes they need to make in the device’s shape or size or link to the bite tube.
Once the device is perfected, Turki said he sees other potential uses, for example for pulmonologists who do scopes through the nose, and cardiologists who do scopes through the mouth to check areas of the heart.
McClellan’s constant theme at Intermed is promoting West Virginia medical innovation for West Virginia, and ultimately for the rest of the nation and the world. Friday’s teamwork was a prime example.
“This is a collaboration of institutions coming together in West Virginia to innovate new, exciting products. … All of these people coming together is what West Virginia needs to actually innovate and improve the healthcare system here.
Callen was on the same page, and happy to expand the potential for the school’s three mobile nursing labs originally intended to train nurses in rural settings.
“Now this adds another element that we hadn’t envisioned before, where we’re able to help doctors test their innovations to increase the quality of care in the state of West Virginia. … We’re so appreciative to be a part of it.”
As a junior college, he said, they were able to help local communities, but with the mobile advanced technology, “we’re just one call away. So we can be anywhere to help support initiatives anywhere in the state.”
Turki agreed, too. “When you have a partnership like this in West Virginia, you empower doctors to find solutions for our community.”
He said West Virginia has passed Mississippi to be number one per-capita for obesity, and if he were working elsewhere, he may not have seen the problem as frequently and wouldn’t have been trying to think of how to solve it. Here, he sees hypoxia on a daily basis. “The value of local partnership is what brings local solutions.”
Email: dbeard@dominionpost.com
