Groundbreaking medical procedure wins worldwide acclaim

A REVOLUTIONARY bypass graft invented at the University of Limerick was hailed at a world medical conference yesterday by top surgeons.

The bypass graft, called “Prolong”, is aimed at a market worth €300 million a year and is likely to generate huge income for the college.

The Prolong graft was unveiled at the annual Charing Cross Vascular Symposium attended by leading surgeons from all over the world.

The UL bypass graft is designed to prolong grafts, which are used in bypass surgery in limbs affected by hardening of the arteries.

Professor Pierce Grace, consultant vascular surgeon and professor of surgical science at UL, said: “People who suffer from limb atherosclerosis can have great difficulty in walking and in severe cases, may develop gangrene leading to limb amputation. There is clearly a huge potential benefit for patients if the effectiveness of current vascular grafts can be improved.

“Existing grafts have a poor long-term function, with problems often occurring at three to five years. The new graft is designed to reduce the need for revision surgery and has therefore been called Prolong.”

Dr Tim McGloughlin, lead biomedical engineer on the project, said the design of the graft is superior to grafts currently in use.

“Sophisticated computer modelling and initial experiments have shown that the new graft design achieves its basic aim of ensuring that blood flow after surgery is as close as possible to physiological blood flow in a healthy artery,” he said.

He said the design of the Prolong graft, a result of PhD studies by Dr Michael Walsh, is significantly different from existing grafts.

The UL-designed graft is currently undergoing animal trials at the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. The research team is hopeful human studies will be carried out by the end of 2007, with the graft going on the market in 2008/9.

A UL spokesperson said: “This would require a partnership with a medical devices company. UL has already had significant discussions with a number of leading medical devices companies but the design must now go through the process of getting formal approval both in Europe and the US.”

If the design is licensed for sale, it could bring in considerable revenue for the university, which holds the patent, as world sales of such vascular grafts are worth around €300m a year.

The research was supported by an Enterprise Ireland fund and Eamon Kavanagh, consultant vascular surgeon at the Mid-Western Regional Hospital.