Toronto, Canada—May 5, 2014—Distinguished physicians from leading cardiac surgery centers gathered at an Educational Symposium to share their experiences with a new-generation blood evacuation system for use following cardiothoracic surgical procedures. ClearFlow, Inc. hosted the Symposium at the recent American Association of Thoracic Surgeon’s meeting in Toronto, Canada, where their award-winning technology was on exhibit for over 2,400 cardiac surgeons and healthcare professionals.

Marc Gillinov, MD, a surgeon from the Cleveland Clinic discussed the incidence and consequences of the complications that can result from the incomplete evacuation of blood from a patient’s chest after cardiac surgery. Louis Perrault, MD, from Montreal Heart Institute described the lack of best practices regarding maintaining chest tube patency after surgery, and discussed the opportunity for implementing new protocols to enhance patient care in this area. Brian Bruckner, MD, from The Methodist DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center in Houston, Texas shared the unique needs of Ventricular Assist Device (VAD) patients with respect to managing their post-operative bleeding. “It was exciting to hear these esteemed physicians share their positive experiences with the PleuraFlow® Active Clearance Technology™ System,” stated the panel moderator and company Founder and Chairman, Edward Boyle, MD.

“At the heart of our mission is a goal to dramatically reduce the common occurrence of chest tube occlusion that leads to death and injury in this patient population,” said ClearFlow President & CEO, Paul Molloy. “Patients are experiencing unnecessary pain and additional procedures and most hospitals are shouldering the burden of extensive cost increases due to lack of consistent protocols and unacceptable failure with current products used for wound drainage post-cardiac surgery.”

About PleuraFlow

The PleuraFlow® Active Clearance Technology™ System was developed by cardiac and thoracic surgeons for patients recovering from cardiovascular, thoracic and trauma surgery and is the only 510(k) cleared and CE Marked medical device available to actively maintain wound drainage catheter patency without compromising the sterile circuit after open surgical procedures. Peer-reviewed prospective clinical studies have highlighted a greater than 1 in 3 rate of failure of drainage tubes for patients undergoing cardiothoracic surgery. The consequences of failure to drain for patients include death, re-operation, heart failure, hemothorax and pleural effusions. Complications resulting from the failure of these drainage tubes force hospitals to incur significant and avoidable costs. These costs are due to longer stays in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), additional procedures being performed, hospital re-admissions, and higher cost of medications.
About ClearFlow, Inc.

ClearFlow, Inc. is an Anaheim, CA based medical device company developing proprietary active wound evacuation systems to speed recovery, reduce complications and lower healthcare costs in patients recovering from surgery. The company has been awarded several prestigious awards, including the European Association of Cardiothoracic Surgeons (EACTS) Techno-College Innovation Award for worldwide innovation that has the potential to change the standard of care in heart and lung surgery and the Innovations in Cardiovascular Interventions Award (ICI) for Best Start-up Innovation. ClearFlow, Inc. is building a pipeline of products, based on its proprietary active clearance technology, to facilitate active wound evacuation in other medical market segments. ClearFlow™ – Flow Better.