Chronic knee pain from knee osteoarthritis (OA) is prevalent in 12% of the global population over the age of 60, 9.6% are men and 18% are women. Knee. OA results in a loss of mobility and debilitating pain in those effected. It can ultimately lead to invasive knee replacement or reconstruction surgery. Approximately 27 million US adults and more than 32 million EU adults are estimated to have clinical knee OA defined on the basis of symptoms and physical findings. Prevalence of OA increases with age; 13.9% of adults age 25 and older have clinical OA of at least one joint, while 33.6% of adults age 65 and older have OA. It is responsible for more than 6 million steroid and non-steroid based knee injections globally each year. It is among the top three reasons, globally, for both opioid and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) prescriptions. In the US alone more than 16,000 annual NSAID-related deaths in arthritis patients have been reported whereas >100,000 people are hospitalized annually for NSAID-related GI bleeding.
Given the well documented economic benefit that comes with restored mobility in patients, the negative side effects of current drug treatments (addiction for opioids and gastrointestinal complications for NSAIDs), the expense and recovery time associated with surgery, and the high ongoing cost of drug therapy, a new treatment paradigm for osteoarthritis is clearly needed.
We, CrannMed Ltd, are developing a unique solution to revolutionise the genicular artery embolisation (GAE) treatment. Our approach involves two key innovations combined to treat chronic knee pain from osteoarthritis
1. two-stage delivery system consisting of an access and delivery catheter, and
2. a bioresorbable embolic particles which completely reabsorbs back into the body within 7 days.
