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The Spanner

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AbbeyMoor Medical, Inc. is privately held and entirely financed by angel investment funds across the United States.

Market Opportunity

In the U.S., it is estimated over 12 million men suffered lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) in 2008 (Millenium Research Groups’ US BPH Market Report). As men age, their prostates enlarge, thereby obstructing the urethra and making the passage of urine difficult. These symptoms often lead to a diagnosis of benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), bladder outlet obstruction (BOO), or simply enlarged prostate. Little is known about the actual cause of the enlargement of the prostate. However, seven out of ten men at age 70 experience LUTS. The symptoms include:

Currently in the U.S. approximately 2.2 million men are taking drugs for LUTS. Statistically, between 20 to 40 percent of these men stop taking drugs during the first year due to poor symptom improvement or side effects such as dry mouth, irritability, or loss of sex drive. This equates to approximately 500,000 to 800,000 men who are bothered enough by their symptoms to seek help but have not been satisfactorily treated.

The symptoms get worse with age. Men with worsening symptoms seek a more radical treatment than drugs, including such options as:

It is important to note that nearly 20 percent of men diagnosed with an enlarged prostate are not obstructed, but rather suffer from impaired bladder contractility. This means that nearly one in five men undergoing a procedure designed to disobstruct their prostate are not actually obstructed at all. This is consistent with the findings that approximately 20 percent of men undergoing either surgery or one of the MIT procedures report they do not get the desired degree of symptom improvement after the procedure. Currently, the only way for the urologist to determine if obstruction or bladder impairment is the root cause of the symptoms is to perform a pressure-flow study. However, pressure flow studies, due to their invasiveness, time-consumption and costs are not widely embraced by the U.S. urological community.

Those symptomatic patients who are truly obstructed will, over time, experience an increasing degree of obstruction due to their prostate enlargement. The moderate to severe LUTS sufferers are at risk of spontaneous acute urinary retention, a complete inability to empty their bladder. Approximately 150,000 U.S. men each year find themselves in retention (all having some degree of obstruction) triggered by such things as drinking alcohol, taking antihistamines, or perhaps waiting too long to urinate. The consequences of acute retention over time include loss of bladder contractility, damage to kidney function, and in rare occasions, death.

There is no perfect option for the LUTS patient. It is evident from the low number of men who choose either surgery or minimally invasive treatment they do not consider current options to be suitable. Yet there is increasing pressure, with the aging of the baby-boomers, to find solutions to this pervasive disease.

The Spanner stent for the prostate is perfectly designed to both help the urologist assess the patient’s condition and offer temporary disobstruction before and/or after definitive treatment.