When they were students in the biomedical engineering department at the University of Virginia, Will Mauldin and Kevin Owen found a problem that needed solving – anesthesiologists often fail to successfully place an epidural on their first try.
It’s a problem that costs the medical system more than $1.5 billion each year, according to Rivanna Medical.
“The failure rates are between 30 – 80% depending on the type of patient and the user’s skill. So, that sounded very high,” Mauldin told Drug Delivery Business News. “Meanwhile, ultrasound had basically taken over in the anesthesia field for all kinds of other procedures, such as vascular access and peripheral nerve blocks, but for some reason it’s still not widely used for neuraxial anesthesia.”
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