Massachusetts-based medical device maker Respiratory Motion won FDA approval for its ExSpiron respiratory monitoring system, the 1st monitor to provide continuous, noninvasive minute ventilation data to improve safely in non-ventilated patients.
Minute ventilation data, the amounts of air that enter and leave the lungs every minute, have not been previously available to doctors "across the continuum of care," according to the company.
“Respiratory Motion’s ExSpiron provides the same volume metrics that physicians have come to rely on to manage patients on mechanical ventilators,” CEO Dr. Jenny Freeman said in prepared remarks. “Respiratory Motion has been created to develop technologies to assist clinicians in their fight against respiratory depression and help improve patient safety. We have seen significant physician interest in our technology and are pleased to be providing a new, quantitative tool to help address this critically important challenge that is faced every day in caring for patients following surgery.”
Respiratory depression can sometimes occur in response to medications, such as narcotic pain-killers and sedatives commonly administered after surgery, according to the press release. Averting respiratory failure can “reduce catastrophic events, improve patient care and outcomes, decrease healthcare costs, and save lives,” the company stated.
“This device stands to provide a quantitative metric of respiratory function much in the same manner that cardiac monitoring did for cardiac and intensive care patients,” said Dr. Gary John Mullen, a clinical advisor to the company.
ExSpiron will be available for clinicians beginning in January 2013, according to the release.