How SamanTree reduces re-operation rates

SamanTree’s Histolog Scanner (CE mark in 2018) provides a breakthrough innovation for enhanced intraoperative guidance. This new imaging modality offers clinicians the real-time ability to assess fresh tissue; the clinician is one touch-on-the-screen away from visualizing cancerous cells immediately during surgery. Recently the company published clincal data unraveling the potential of its proprietary medical imaging platform.

Study with breast cancer patients

The Polarhis study was conducted at St-Vincenz Hospital, Paderborn - Germany, under the supervision of Professor Michael P. Lux. It involved 5 breast surgeons and 1 pathologist that evaluated the Histolog Scanner for intraoperative use. “In most of the cases, re-operations are due to remaining DCIS lesions, and our study demonstrated how well the Histolog Scanner enables their detection at the time of surgery. In our hands, the Histolog Scanner could have avoided re-operations for 9/12 patients, representing reduction of the re-operation rate up to 75%; this is groundbreaking results for breast conserving surgery. Reducing the re-operation rate is important not only for the patients, but also for hospital administration as it is not reimbursed in Germany and represent an important cost”, explained Professor Michael P. Lux.

Study with prostate cancer patients

The Enclosure Study was conducted at Canisius Wilhelmina Hospital (Netherlands), under the supervision of Professor Diederik Somford and Dr. Willem Vreuls. The study evaluated the Histolog Scanner as an alternative to NeuroSAFE. “Surgeons are most of the time guided with preoperative MRI, which does not enable cellular visualization of the nerve-adjacent areas of the prostate, resulting in 20-40% positive margins found by final pathology examination following surgery. The current best practice to avoid the risk of positive margins is to perform frozen sections of the nerve-adjacent structures of the prostate, a procedure called NeuroSAFE. This procedure requires time and resources, limiting its standardization amongst hospitals. Enclosure study shows the relevance of the information provided by the Histolog Scanner resulting in similar performance to NeuroSAFE procedure, however with 80% time reduction”, explained Dr. Willem Vreuls.

Charles S. Carignan, MD, SamanTree Medical Chairman commented, “the numbers speak for themselves; the Histolog Scanner was shown to provide the gold standard information in 5 minutes instead of 45. In cases where frozen sections are performed as intraoperative assessment, the Histolog Scanner provides surgeons and pathologists with a faster communication channel while keeping the microscopic resolution. Another demonstration of that will be published early 2023 with the utilization of our platform in brain cancer.”

(Press release / SK)