TransEnterix's Single-Incision SPIDER® Surgical System Used for First Time in UK

London, United Kingdom, May 31, 2012 --(PR.com)-- TransEnterix’s single-incision SPIDER® Surgical System has been used for the first time in the United Kingdom.

Dr. Michel Gagner, an internationally renowned laparoscopic and endoscopic surgeon, used the device to successfully perform a sleeve gastrectomy, a form of metabolic surgery, at Homerton University Hospital in London. Gagner demonstrated the SPIDER System’s capabilities as part of the hospital’s bariatric surgery symposium, which attracted surgeons from all over the world. Assisting Gagner was Dr. Mohammed Al Kuwari, a surgeon at Hamad General Hospital in Doha, Qatar. The procedure took 40 minutes, comparable in duration to traditional five-incision surgery.

The symposium was organized by Dr. Kesava Mannur, director of bariatric surgery at Homerton University Hospital. As the official hospital of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games taking place in London, Homerton will provide health care to all Olympians and their families.

Transenterix’s SPIDER System allows surgeons who are performing abdominal procedures to introduce a camera and multiple instruments to the operating site via a single incision made inside the patient’s belly button. With its 18-millimeter diameter, the SPIDER platform delivers the smallest single-site incision in the market – about the size of a United States dime or United Kingdom five pence sterling. The SPIDER System also replicates the multiple-incision triangulation experience that surgeons encounter in traditional laparoscopic procedures.

“The SPIDER Surgical System allows surgeons to exercise advanced minimally invasive techniques while preserving the triangulation capacity they expect during laparoscopic procedures,” Gagner said.

Using the SPIDER Surgical System, a surgeon makes one small incision inside the patient’s belly button, inserts the platform and expands it like an umbrella. Expansion offers true-left and true-right hand-eye coordination and allows the surgeon to approach the operating site at the necessary angles. Through the platform’s two rigid ports, the surgeon inserts a camera and off-the-shelf laparoscopic tools. Through its two flexible ports, he inserts TransEnterix’s 360-degree flexible instruments.

“We are thrilled to have the SPIDER Surgical System introduced in the United Kingdom by a surgeon as acclaimed as Dr. Michel Gagner, who is internationally renowned for his skill, expertise and vision,” said Todd M. Pope, president and CEO of TransEnterix. “The SPIDER platform continues to grow in popularity internationally as more surgeons utilize the system and get to appreciate first hand the many benefits it offers them and their patients.”

The New England Journal of Medicine, one of the most respected peer-reviewed medical journals in the world, highlighted sleeve gastrectomy in its March edition. It published two separate studies demonstrating that gastric-sleeve surgery was more effective in treating Type 2 diabetes than medicine, diet and exercise alone – to date, science’s traditional approaches toward treating the disease.

The SPIDER System’s catheter-based, flexible instruments and intra-abdominal triangulation capability are technologies not available in any other surgical system on the market. Visit spidersurgery dot com for more.

TransEnterix is a cutting-edge medical device company that develops pioneering technologies that advance minimally invasive surgery. Learn more at transenterix dot com.