LuMend Inc. is developing interventional devices to treat one of the most difficult problems currently facing interventional radiologists and cardiologists —chronic total occlusions (CTOs), arterial vessel blockages that preclude blood flow beyond the obstruction. Nearly one-third of all patients in a recently concluded international multi-center five-year study were found through angiography to have one or more CTOs. Extrapolating from this data, an estimated 900,000 peripheral vascular and one million coronary procedures will be performed worldwide annually in which a patient will have at least one chronic total occlusion.
In spite of the apparently large patient pool, the treatment of CTOs accounts for only 10-20% of all procedures being performed in cath labs today, according to LuMend's president Charles...