Our Initial Focus: The eShunt^® System

The eShunt System comprises an endovascularly implantable CSF shunt and associated delivery componentry designed to avoid the need for invasive surgery, general anesthesia, extended hospitalization, and post-procedure pain management.  Based on its novel design and deployment, the eShunt Implant is intended to significantly reduce failures associated with VPS systems such as infection, catheter obstruction, and over-drainage.  An interventionalist (e.g., interventional neuroradiologist, neurosurgeon, neurologist) will deploy the eShunt Implant using local anesthesia through a percutaneous femoral venous approach under X-ray guidance in an angiography suite.  The eShunt Implant deployment procedure should be accomplished in less than one hour, potentially allowing for an outpatient, day-surgery alternative to traditional VPS placement.

The innovative nature of the eShunt System highlights a significant opportunity to dramatically simplify the treatment of communicating hydrocephalus by potentially eliminating the need for open surgical VPS placement and fits the definition of “disruptive technology” in the same way that endovascular coiling and stenting revolutionized the microsurgical clipping of cerebral aneurysms.  The eShunt System is designed to eliminate the need for passing a rigid catheter through cerebral cortex and subcortical white matter, and the multiple incisions and invasive shunt catheter tunneling associated with conventional VPS placement and revision surgeries.  Other significant potential advantages of the eShunt System include elimination of the common problem of over drainage of CSF, typically caused by a siphoning effect of certain VPS devices, as well a significant reduction or elimination of post-procedure pain and infection.  With an intended reduction in procedure morbidity and the use of local anesthesia, the eShunt System has the potential to expand the use of CSF shunts in patients with co-morbidities in whom general anesthesia and invasive surgery are currently contra-indicated.