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TWST: Would you give us a brief historical sketch of the company and a
picture of the things you are doing at the present time?
Mr. McCormick: Endologix has developed the Powerlink System, a minimally
invasive technology to treat abdominal aortic aneurysms. Commonly
referred to as AAA, it is a weakening of the wall of the aorta, the
largest artery in the body, which results in a balloon-like enlargement.
Once a AAA develops, it can continue to enlarge, and IT becomes
susceptible to rupture, which is life threatening. The clinical
literature indicates that if it ruptures, approximately 50% of those
persons will die before they reach the hospital, and of those who do
survive, half of those will succumb due to complications of surgery. If
one is fortunate enough to have their AAA diagnosed prior to rupture,
the patient is usually sent for a CT scan to characterize the shape and
size of the aneurysm. Conventional treatment is open surgery where
surgeons make a midline incision and move your intestines to the side to
gain access to the aorta. They then clamp above and below the weakened
segment, open up the sac and sew in a surgical graft, and then put
everything back together again. This procedure carries a surgical
mortality of 3% to 8%. To put that into perspective, open-heart surgery
carries slightly less than a 1% mortality rate. In addition, the
conventional surgery carries a serious morbidity of 15% to 40%, and long
recovery times. The Powerlink is a stent graft to treat AAA. Stent
grafts are metal cages or scaffolds covered with a material, and the
devices are compressed and loaded into small catheters. The catheters
are then inserted into the body through the artery of the leg and passed
up into the aorta and then deployed. Many patients can have the
treatment performed under a regional or local anesthesia. Once in place,
the stent graft acts to shunt blood flow away from the weakened wall,
which reduces the pressure and the risk of rupture. The company
completed an FDA pivotal trial for the Powerlink System with excellent
clinical results and began a focused launch here in the US in early
2005. We are now at the next stage of broader US commercialization.
Tickers included in this excerpt: ELGX
For more information call (212) 952 7433. The
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