Placing ear tubes in children is an excessively common procedure – more than 600,000 children, most under the age of 5, need this surgery to help combat chronic ear infection. The upside? Fewer antibiotics prescribed. Downside? Putting young children under with general anesthesia.
Minnesota startup Preceptis Medical is designing a way to place ear tubes in children with minimal anesthesia – optimizing the surgery to make insertion more seamless. It just raised $976,000 in debt, according to a regulatory filing.
The company’s testing out its Hummingbird device in four Minnesota test centers, including Mayo Clinic. It’s still an investigational device. The Wall Street Journal wrote of Preceptis in an article last year:
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Preceptis Medical is testing a device, called a hummingbird, which lets doctors make the incision in the ear drum and insert the tube at the same time. It uses nitrous oxide instead of general anesthesia. The company hopes the device, which would require clearance by the Food and Drug Administration, will be on the market next year, said Steve Anderson, Preceptis chief executive.
“What we are doing is that we are trying to come up with solutions for moving those procedures out of the OR so that the kids do not have to undergo general anesthesia,” Anderson told MedCity News in 2012. “We have come up with a way of safely delivering ear tubes right in the ENT’s office.”
Here’s how it works:
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