to see more in cardiac surgery

The SPY Imaging System allows cardiac surgeons to capture, review, print and archive high-quality image sequences of coronary arteries, in real-time during a CABG procedure. Use of SPY enables cardiac surgeons to visually assess coronary circulation and confirm the quality of bypass grafts performed during surgery. Surgeons can use SPY pre-bypass to confirm their operative plan and intra-operatively to determine the need for any technical revisions to the bypass grafts. This may reduce post-operative complications and eliminate the need to make any repeat surgeries or other post-operative interventions.

Before SPY, there was no practical, routine method of visually assessing coronary artery circulation or bypass graft quality during CABG surgery. X-ray angiography is not practical in the cardiac operating room due to safety concerns related to radiation and the extra time and equipment required to perform the procedure. The SPY procedure does not involve radiation, which eliminates many safety concerns and can be accomplished without adding a significant amount of time to the surgical procedure or the need for additional personnel.

Approximately 10-20% of all CABG patients experience complications post-surgery, ranging from myocardial injury (MI) to death, as a result of poorly or non-functioning grafts. One recent study of more than 2,300 patients concluded that the use of SPY during CABG surgery in a subset of patients resulted in a significant 9% reduction in post-operative MI compared to those procedures not involving SPY imaging. In addition, it has been reported that approximately 9% of the more than 700,000 patients throughout the world who undergo CABG each year will require a second surgery or will return to the catheterization laboratory to address poorly functioning grafts. Repeat surgeries are associated with significantly increased risk of serious complications including death. The ability to better detect poorly functioning grafts in real-time in the operating room during the initial CABG procedure may eliminate the need for some of these risky and expensive additional procedures.

In April 2007, the United States Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) designated a specific ICD-9-CM code for SPY Intra-operative Imaging procedures. The SPY procedure is one of only four new technologies in cardiac surgery to be recommended for a new code in the past 10 years. The new code will take effect October 1, 2007.