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Victoria, BC – GuideStar Medical Devices CEO and Founder Mike Dolphin joins the Core Anesthesia podcast to discuss dural puncture, post-dural puncture headache, and the case for preventing the complication rather than treating it. The episode is available HERE and wherever you get your podcasts.

Hosted by Tanner Hulin, DNP, CRNA, and Cole Dill, DNP, CRNA, Core Anesthesia is one of the most widely followed podcasts in nurse anesthesia, serving a community of more than 33,500 practicing CRNAs and student registered nurse anesthetists.

The conversation covers ground that surprises many clinicians. Roughly one in three dural punctures is not recognized at the time of the procedure, and a recent five-year follow-up study found chronic headache in one in five patients after an accidental dural puncture, compared with fewer than one in twenty of those without one, a picture that sits uneasily with the traditional teaching that PDPH is self-limiting. Mike Dolphin also discusses how EpiZact gives clinicians a definitive, reliable endpoint at loss of resistance without asking them to change the technique they already use. As Cole Dill puts it in the episode, "you do everything the same that you would for an epidural... it's a one for one substitution."

"I was that initial skeptic: I don't need something like this, I'm very proficient in epidurals. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized there are so many areas in anesthesia where we have had things like that, such as ultrasound. It completely changed the game, and now it's the gold standard. This is an amazing addition to the tool belt that we have as anesthesia providers. From somebody that's used it: I'm impressed. This is the real deal." – Cole Dill, DNP, CRNA

"When you get to the loss of resistance, your hands are trained to stop. My brain is telling my hands to stop, and by the time that has happened, the device has already fired. It's giving that little layer of safety." – Tanner Hulin, DNP, CRNA

"In my opinion, this is definitively a better tool. It's precise, it's reliable, it gives you a definitive entry of the needle into the epidural space. We believe something like this will become the standard of care, just like video laryngoscopes are the standard of care and ultrasound is for a lot of central lines. This is something we think will change the way people do this over time, in a really positive way." – Mike Dolphin, CEO, GuideStar Medical Devices

Listen to the episode HERE.

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About EpiZact
Epidurals are performed to provide anesthesia to a patient, by means of injection of medication into the epidural space. Traditionally, epidurals are performed using the “loss of resistance” technique. EpiZact is the first device developed for epidurals that is designed to stop the forward motion of the needle upon sensing a loss of resistance, providing a tactile and visual signal to the user while simultaneously stopping the needle from further advancement, potentially reducing the incidence of accidental dural puncture.

About GuideStar
GuideStar Medical Devices is a medical device company located in Victoria, BC. The Company’s flagship device, EpiZact, was designed with the intent of reducing the incidence of accidental dural punctures during epidural administration. GuideStar is committed to offering innovative solutions to unmet medical needs with a primary goal of enhancing patient safety.

 

Investor Contact
Mike Dolphin
CEO, GuideStar Medical Devices
info@guidestarmd.com