Since receiving FDA clearance, the Monarch Platform has been installed at several hospitals to assist pulmonology teams in diagnosing small, hard-to-reach nodules in the periphery of the lungs. Our ultimate goal with the Monarch Platform is to enable pulmonologists to provide a quicker, more accurate diagnosis to patients so that they may begin treatment if needed.
To date, physicians have performed over 1,000 bronchoscopic procedures with the Monarch Platform. Below are a few of the doctors and hospitals that have been featured in the press for their use of the platform in research studies and patient diagnosis.
Dr. Hogarth served as a consultant for Auris to develop the Monarch Platform, providing clinical feedback during the development of the platform. He also participated in an independent study to evaluate the feasibility and safety of the platform in patients needed a bronchoscopic biopsy. Dr. Hogarth believes this technology will help diagnose lung cancer in the early stages, saying of the platform “I can get out now to new regions of the lung and because of the flexibility of the device I can get to spots I couldn’t get to before.”
Dr. Chen participated in an ACCESS study and ongoing BENEFIT study of the Monarch Platform. He presented the results of the ACCESS study at the CHEST 2018 Meeting, which found that the Monarch Platform could successfully biopsy tissue with high accuracy in a cadaveric model. The goal of the BENEFIT study is to assess the feasibility and safety of using the Monarch Platform to aid in the diagnosis of peripheral lung nodules, and included the first in-human study of the platform.
El Camino Hospital was the first institution in the United States to use the Monarch Platform for bronchoscopy. Dr. Ganesh Krishna, who performed the first Monarch procedure at the hospital as part of a clinical trial, said that the platform is a needed “paradigm shift” in the way lung disease is diagnosed. “Since the robotic bronchoscope has the ability to travel deeper into the lung and precisely guide a biopsy instrument to even the most difficult nodules, the technology offers the potential to diagnose lung cancer at an earlier stage,” he said of the platform.
Read more about El Camino Hospital’s use of the Monarch Platform:
“We chose the Monarch Platform because, in our opinion, it’s lead to the next evolution in our ability to diagnose lung cancer.”
“I chose the Monarch Platform for our Interventional Pulmonary suite because it had the technology that included vision at the distal end that gave us opportunities to do the diagnostic testing that we needed to do to diagnose lung cancer at the early stage.”
“The advent of the Monarch Platform allows us to get as close as we can to the lesion, to maintain visualization in the airway the whole time, and this allows us to get a diagnosis and move forward with the patient’s care.”
Bronchoscopy:
Complications from bronchoscopy are rare and most often minor, but if they occur, may include breathing difficulty, vocal cord spasm, hoarseness, slight fever, vomiting, dizziness, bronchial spasm, infection, low blood oxygen, bleeding from biopsied site, or an allergic reaction to medications. Only rarely do patients experience other more serious complications (for example, collapsed lung, respiratory failure, heart attack and/or cardiac arrhythmia).
Urology:
Adverse effects from both Mini-PCNL and Ureteroscopy include pain, urinary tract infection, fever, hematuria (presence of blood in urine), exposure to low levels of radiation, retained or residual stones.
Adverse effects from ureteroscopy may include pain, perforation or injury to the ureter, resulting in extravasation of fluid and urine (urinoma), stricture of the ureter with risk of subsequent obstruction (hydronephrosis needing further repair), rare avulsion of the ureter, urinary blood clots, residual stones.
PCNL access may result in minor and major adverse effects. Minor effects include fever and nephrostomy leak. Major adverse effects may include injuries to pleura, liver, spleen, large vessels with related bleeding, gallbladder, duodenum, jejunum, colon with related cutaneous fistula, fever, pain, ileus, elevated counts.
Major adverse effects related to stone removal may include infection and urosepsis, intravascular fluid overload, extravasation of fluid, and post percutaneous nephrolithotomy bleeding.