Endovascular grafts were invented by Medtronic, the medical device manufacturer based in Fridley, to treat abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA), a weakness in the body’s main artery that can rupture and cause death if left untreated. Abdominal aortic aneurysms affect about 1.2 million people in the United States—mostly those 65 and older. Most patients don’t know they have one.

“The gold-standard treatment if you are diagnosed with AAA is open surgical repair,” says Katie Szyman, vice president and general manager of Medtronic’s Endovascular Innovations business. But that’s set to change with the introduction of the company’s AneuRx AAAdvantage Stent Graft with the Xcelerant Hydro Delivery System. “If you have open surgery, it typically will take you one to two weeks before you’re up and about and leave the hospital,” Szyman says. “The procedure time is anywhere from three to four hours.”

The AneuRx, now in use at Abbott Northwestern Hospital, dramatically reduces the procedure time. “If you get an endovascular stent graft, [the procedure] will take typically one to two hours, and the best operators will do it in as short as 45 minutes,” Syzman notes. “Typically the patients go home the next day.”

The delivery system has a hydrophilic coating that helps the surgeon more easily slide the stent into place. Placing an endovascular stent is a minimally invasive procedure in which two small incisions are made where the legs meet the hips at the femoral artery. “The hydrophilic coating technology is really focused on helping us to treat more patients,” Szyman says. “One of the challenges with getting these devices into patient’s arteries is they can get stuck if the device feels kind of sticky as it’s going into the patient’s arteries. And this hydrophilic coating allows the device to slide into the patient’s arteries.”

Women typically have smaller arteries, which makes it more difficult to get these devices through. Szyman adds, “This hydrophilic coating is going to help to treat more women, and men who have really difficult-to-access arteries.”

Szyman says that Medtronic’s aim is to advance the technology to treat more patients. “We would say that current technologies can treat about 75 to 80 percent of patients that present [for treatment]. Our goal is to treat 95 percent of patients endovascularly,” she says.