GMIT biomedical engineer wins top award at Vascular Surgical Congress

Dr Florian Stefanov, a Biomedical Research Engineer at GMIT’s Medical Technology Centre, GMedTech, in collaboration with the Western Vascular Institute, Galway University Hospital and Galway Clinic, has won first place at the International Society for Vascular Surgery 2015 Congress, for a poster presentation outlining the performance of the multi-layer stent for the treatment of aortic aneurysms.

Formally titled “Haemodynamic Insights from Six Complex Patient-Specific Aneurysmal Cases Treated with the Streamliner Device for Aortic Arch Repair (STAR) “, this study assessed the performance of the novel multi-layered streamliner stent device developed by CardiatisTM, Belgium for the treatment of complex aortic arch aneurismal cases. Aortic aneurysms are an abnormal ballooning of the main blood vessel attached to the heart. If left untreated, aneurysms may rupture causing death.

Dr Stefanov explains “We looked at the latest endovascular techniques used to treat aortic arch aneurysms from six medical centres worldwide and performed numerous computer simulations on these treatment options. Our findings showed that the streamliner device is a promising new technology, which produces very encouraging clinical outcomes for complex cases and may constitute a better alternative to current surgical and/or endovascular approaches.”

This is the first time that computer simulations have assessed and predicted the blood’s interaction with this device, for patient-specific cases, with the inclusion of other procedural scenarios.  The results from this study can assist pre-operative planning, which leads to improved clinical outcomes without the need for re-intervention. 

This study was a joint collaborative effort involving Dr Liam Morris and Dr Patrick Delassus from the GMedTech Centre and Professor Sherif Sultan and Ms Niamh Hynes from the Western Vascular Institute, Department of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery, Galway University Hospital and the Galway Clinic.  Professor Sultan and Ms Hynes set-up a global registry two years ago for patients treated with the streamliner device and approached GMedTech researchers to assist them in further understanding the workings of this technology.  Other collaborative work between these two groups, in assessing commercially available devices for the treatment of aneurysms, resulted in a recent joint journal publication in the European Journal of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery.





Dr Liam Morris comments “Florian’s achievement in receiving this award from the International Society for Vascular Surgery highlights the important role that bio-engineers can play in assisting surgical planning.  The award brings with it further international recognition of the clinical relevance of the work being carried out within our centre.”



 

GMIT’s GMedTech Centre, based at the Dublin Road campus in Galway, accommodates a multi-disciplinary team of researchers working together to provide clinically inspired solutions to clinicians and the MedTech sector. The centre has gained international recognition for its capacity to design and develop advanced pre-clinically relevant in vitro simulators which replicate various parts of the human anatomy.

 

These pre-clinical in vitro simulators can prove the feasibility and accelerate the development of the next generation of medical devices and training platform for clinicians. These systems also have the potential to assist surgical planning. GMedtech has highly developed expertise in the replication of various disease conditions and has provided benchmarking data for the validation of computational modelling.

 

The Centre has access to expert medical knowledge, medical imaging processing capabilities, engineering competence with advanced materials and manufacturing technologies, bench testing capacity for relevant physiological bio-fluids systems and state of the art fluoroscopic and ultrasound imaging equipment.

 

GMedTech researchers are actively focused on several key areas such as: Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm, Cranial Aneurysms, Coronary Artery Disease, Venous System, Musculoskeletal system, Pulmonary, Gastrointestinal.