Accelus, Inc., a Palm Beach Gardens, Florida company focused on minimally invasive surgery (MIS), has announced the launch of its FlareHawk7, an ultra-low profile (7mm) expandable lumbar fusion device.
Accelus Launches Ultra-Low-Profile FlareHawk7 Cage
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Accelus CEO Chris Walsh told OTW, “FlareHawk7 best represents our commitment to providing surgeons with Access without Compromise. While other companies have chased footprint via trajectory, Accelus has solved for footprint through our proprietary Adaptive Geometry technology. This helps minimize the significant clinical complications such as nerve and vascular injuries, subsidence, and non-union.”
“FlareHawk7 is a multidirectional expandable lumbar device that is inserted at an ultra-low profile of 7mm wide by 7mm tall before expanding to 11mm wide and up to 12mm tall. Like Accelus’ FlareHawk9 expandable lumbar device, FlareHawk7 features Adaptive Geometry, which allows it to traverse the neural window at a size slightly larger than a No. 2 pencil before increasing in width, height, and lordosis.”
More Than 10,500 Flarehawks Cages in More Than 9,000 Patients
Walsh explained to OTW that “FlareHawk7 is designed to be used in MIS and endoscopic surgeries and features the same open architecture of FlareHawk9 that allows for continuous graft delivery through the implant and out into the disc space. And, we will soon be introducing our TiHawk9 titanium-bonded multidirectional implant to the FlareHawk family of expandable implants.”
“The instrumentation designed for FlareHawk7 really allowed the product to help facilitate each surgeon’s preferred technique with direct visualization of the disc prep and implant delivery in endoscopic procedures and direct access to the disc space through Kambin’s triangle with little to no neural retraction. I think this was the most interesting aspects of the product to our customers and were what we hoped to achieve with this product.”
“FlareHawk7 enables me to do fully endoscopic interbody fusion as outpatient surgery, with the best endplate prep and great clinical results,” said Jian Shen, M.D., Ph.D., a world-renowned leader in endoscopic spine surgery.
Looking forward, Walsh told OTW, “Current plans are to offer FlareHawk7 in a titanium-bonded version, as well as to make even greater advances in our adaptive geometry technology that we will soon introduce to the market including our Toro and Zform product lines.”
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This is a fascinating development. In my practice we've seen similar outcomes with the revised protocol. The key differentiator seems to be patient selection criteria. Has anyone else noticed the correlation with BMI thresholds?
Great point. I'd push back slightly on the conclusion, the sample size in the cited study is too small to draw population-level inferences. That said, the directional signal is compelling and worth a larger RCT.
We implemented a similar approach last year. Early results are promising but we're still gathering 12-month follow-up data. Happy to share our protocol if anyone is interested.
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