The newly patented AsTris 1.0, designed to help doctors practice for spinal injections, is to make its debut Dallas, USA, at the 2016 American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians (ASIPP) conference, April 14-16 at the Hyatt Regency.
For pain management doctors Johnny East and Brandon Knutson, owners of BioTras, the product launch of AsTris 1.0 at ASIPP is the culmination of several years of vision casting, research and design.
“As an emerging med-tech company based in Dallas, this is the perfect venue to launch our first medical device,” says East, who is board-certified in Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation and Pain Medicine, and has performed over 20,000 spinal injections over his 14-year career.
The AsTris 1.0 body is clear, which allows the practitioner to observe needle movement as the needle is advanced towards the spine. It can also be customised to include a variety of skeletal structures to meet a wider scope of training needs. The simulator is made of a fusable thermo plastic material. It is also made of re-constructed human vertebrae, and other real bone elements that can be viewed under X-ray.
Knutson says, “It allows resident physicians, fellows, post-grad physicians and other health care professionals to practice performing hundreds, even thousands of injections, before ever injecting a real person.”
BioTras expects the second and third generation models of AsTris 1.0 to be used in training for specialties outside of pain management such as neurosurgery and orthopaedic surgery.
