Globally, over 237 million people suffer from peripheral artery disease (PAD), an abnormal narrowing of the arteries. The implantation of stents (spiral wire protheses) is the first-line therapy for PAD with ~ 3.5M stents implanted worldwide every year. Restenosis, the gradual reclogging of the blood vessel after stent implantation, is a major problem leading to high morbidity and mortality which occurs within 6 years after implantation in ~23 % of all cases and is often detected when it is too late.
More frequent surveillance of PAD patients to avoid unnecessary amputations and death is an unmet clinical challenge. VesselSens is an innovative German MedTech startup in the area of angiology and sensor technology and we develop the StentGuard, a smart therapeutic monitoring device that enables rapid, low cost and early diagnosis of in-stent restenosis non-invasively and reliably. Thereby also significantly reducing the number of amputations.
The ‘StentGuard’ device allows stent monitoring at high frequencies with low cost by non-specialist medical practitioners solving the problem of unchecked disease progression and saving the global economy billions of dollars per year.