Medtronic launches Discyphor direct catheter system

Medtronic, Inc. announced the U.S. launch of the Discyphor Direct™ Catheter System, the second-generation catheter system used by physicians to obtain additional information to diagnose discogenic low back pain.

The Discyphor Direct Catheter System provides additional information to help identify which disc is causing a patient’s pain.  More than 100,000 patients annually undergo spinal surgery for discogenic low back pain in the United States1, but patient satisfaction from such surgeries is mixed.

Robert White, president of Kyphon and Interspinous Process Decompression Devices for the Spinal and Biologics at Medtronic said, With the Discyphor Direct Catheter System, we are empowering physicians to  independently assess discs to determine the source of a patient’s back pain while delivering many enhancements over our first-generation product. Both patients and physicians will benefit from this new system because of its improved ease of use and a needle that is designed with an atraumatic or blunt tip.

With the Discyphor Direct Catheter System, physicians use Medtronic’s innovative Functional Anaesthetic Discography™ (F.A.D. ™) Procedure that identifies a patient’s discogenic pain by anesthetizing each suspect disc individually.  This procedure differs from typical means of diagnosis such as imaging studies or provocative discography, which generates pain in an attempt to locate the suspected disc.  The F.A.D. Procedure was introduced two years ago and has been used on more than 3,000 patients.