A novel, efficient and minimally invasive medical procedure to treat anastomotic leakage during colorectal cancer surgery.
It is estimated that in 2018, 97,220 people will be diagnosed with colorectal cancer and that about 50,630 people will die from this disease; making treatment this cancer to be of growing importance nowadays. Despite improvements in the area of surgical treatment of the tumor, there are still many risk factors connected with mortality, recovery and reoccurrence rates, as well as complications (like anastomotic leakage). 

After having successfully launched an innovation that permits the transport of Ebola patients in 2014, Tecnoline (a medical company founded in 1992 in Modena, Italy) decided to invest into innovation development for the surgical treatment of colorectal cancer. Three years ago the team started developing a prototype of the Catheter for Transcaecal Ileostomy (CTI), an alternative technique to loop ileostomy to defunction low rectal anastomoses. Our company conducted a positive round of animal and clinical tests. 

The new invention is capable to decrease morbidity and mortality rates due to anastomotic leakage and surgery complications; diminish the hospital stay and ‘worried well’ by 50%; reduce the operating time by at least 50% and up to 99% leakage of feces. It also have a positive environmental impact since it replace the disposable plastic pouches and reduce energy use and other impacts connected with the patients stay in the hospitals. Finally, this invention has the potential to boost the company growth, translated into 8.91M€ of turnover (2025) and 40 new hires for the development period. 

Tecnoline was authorized by the Ethical Committee of Aragon (Spain) to implement CTI in a patient population in Aragon (18 patients). The solution has just passed through the experimental process and therefore reaches TRL7. Thus, it is the right moment to start preparing the CTI market readiness and roll-out to provide the medical sector with a unique solution that makes treatment of colorectal cancer patients safer, more efficient and effective.