High blood pressure?New way to treat it.
A novel 'paper-clip' implant that can tackle resistant high blood pressure has been developed.
The implant, called the ROX coupler, can help in treatment-resistant hypertension, or resistant high blood pressure, a condition in which blood pressure remains high despite treatment with antihypertensive medications.
The ROX coupler is a small metal stent made of nitinol which when deployed, acts like a 'paper-clip' joining an artery and a vein together in the groin area.
This allows blood to flow between the high pressure artery and the low pressure vein. The Coupler is inserted and put in place via key-hole procedure at the groin under local anaesthesia.
Doctors at Glenfield Hospital, on the outskirts of Leicester, UK, used the device successfully on a 56-year-old male patient during an operation on September 16.
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