Skip to main content

News

You are here

Technical.ly Baltimore: How CoapTech Turned a Feeding Tube Innovation Into a Company

Thursday, December 8, 2016

With CoapTech, Steven Tropello and Howard Carolan are working on new technology for replacing patients’ feeding tubes.

The approach, called Percutaneous Ultrasound Gastrostomy, or PUG, utilizes a device with magnets that doctors can use to guide a feeding tube into place. It also features an ultrasound that allows doctors to see what is happening inside the body as the tube as it goes to the stomach, and identify the safest site for the tube to be placed.

Tropello, an emergency physician at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, realized the need for a new approach when he couldn’t bring together the specialist and the expensive medical equipment required to replace a patient’s feeding tube during a night shift. As the patient was admitted to the hospital overnight, he realized it was also a cost issue. Tropello created a way to insert the feeding tube that wouldn’t have to be done in an operating room, and would cost less.

Read more via Technical.ly Balitmore.