Simbionix Introduces Angio Mentor Suite for Endovascular Team Training

November 18, 2013—Simbionix USA Corporation (Cleveland, OH), a provider of medical education and simulation training, announced the release of the Angio Mentor suite, its next-generation simulator platform for endovascular training. The Angio Mentor suite provides clinicians with various platforms on which to practice endovascular skills and full procedures on realistic fluoroscopic images using the same tools used in real procedures. Simbionix introduced the Angio Mentor suite at the VEITH symposium in New York, New York, November 19–22.

According to Simbionix, the Angio Mentor suite is designed to help clinicians develop technical skills with hands-on training provided in a true-to-life clinical environment and a setting that facilitates team training. Training with the Angio Mentor is done on a realistic human patient mannequin that allows introduction of endovascular devices through the actual access site required for the procedure, such as femoral, radial, pedal, and subclavian.

Additional features help create an ergonomic and realistic catheterization lab/interventional suite environment, including a height-adjustable patient table; a large monitor for fluoro, echo, and hemodynamic display; and a large selection of devices and drugs. The company stated that the physical attributes of the system are very close to an actual patient, so team training becomes more realistic and allows for practicing of communications among the clinicians, with the goal of improving patient safety and reducing medical errors.

Simbionix advised that the Angio Mentor suite is fully backwards compatible and enables operation of the entire Simbionix Angio Mentor/PROcedure rehearsal studio library of modules, which currently includes 18 Angio Mentor endovascular modules to date.

In the company’s press release, Nguyen Tran, who is Chief Operating Officer at Nancy School of Surgery in Nancy, France, commented, “We purchased three Angio Mentor suite systems for our simulation center at Nancy University Hospital. This project is supported by the French Ministry through a program called IDEFI (Excellent Initiative in Pedagogy). These simulators are constantly being used in training sessions, and we are pleased with the simulation experience they provide. The haptic is very realistic, and the ergonomic setup makes the system an ideal platform for team training. In my opinion, this is the ideal tool for educating and training the physicians and the clinical staff.”

On November 14, Simbionix announced that a module for endovascular aneurysm repair (EVAR) simulation of the Anaconda stent graft system (Vascutek Ltd., Inchinnan, United Kingdom) has been added to its library of training opportunities on the Angio Mentor multidisciplinary surgical simulators. The EVAR Vascutek module provides hands-on practice of endovascular procedures in a virtual reality simulated environment. The module will help physicians practice the clinical and practical aspects of the Anaconda system on various anatomies, using the latest techniques and therapeutic approaches available. Simbionix currently provides training tools and virtual reality simulators for most of the leading devices for EVAR procedures in the industry, the company advised.