Mauna Kea Technologies and Endoscopy Institute of Hawaii Achieve 1,200 Procedure Milestone
Dr. Jeong Kim Uses Cellvizio to Improve Diagnosis of Gastric Disease
Paris and Boston, September 19, 2023 – 8:00 a.m. CEST – Mauna Kea Technologies (Euronext Growth: ALMKT) inventor of Cellvizio®, the multidisciplinary probe and needle-based confocal laser endomicroscopy (p/nCLE) platform, announces that Jeong Kim, M.D., and the Endoscopy Institute of Hawaii (EIH) clinical team have completed more than 1,200 Cellvizio procedures for the diagnosis and interventional treatment of gastric disease, a condition which can lead to gastric cancer. EIH is part of the Covenant Physician Partners network of facilities and physicians which operates more than 85 leading healthcare centers across the United States.
“With Cellvizio as a key adjunctive tool in my diagnostic arsenal, I am able to provide a thorough screening of the stomach in a relatively short period of time,” said Dr. Kim. “This significantly improves my detection rate of gastric intestinal metaplasia (GIM) and related conditions, while better informing my interventional treatment plan for each patient.”
Dr. Kim, the lead gastroenterologist at EIH, is a specialist providing care for a broad range of digestive illnesses such as detection of stomach and colon cancer, gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), and liver disease. His focus on minimally invasive endoscopy led Dr. Kim to add the Cellvizio program to his facility in January 2020. Since then, he has used Cellvizio on more than 1,200 patients, primarily for the screening and detection of GIM, which is a known precursor to gastric cancer and is highly prevalent in certain populations such as patients of Asian descent and among patients with specific risk factors like diet, lifestyle, or family history of gastric disease.
“We’re immensely proud that leading physicians like Dr. Kim are using Cellvizio to advance the diagnostic capabilities for people with gastric disease and to create personalized treatment plans that lead to better patient and practice outcomes,” said Sacha Loiseau, Ph.D., CEO of Mauna Kea Technologies. “This milestone with EIH exemplifies the adoption rate we’ve been seeing for Cellvizio in specialized care centers. We’re looking forward to more and more of these centers coming online thanks to our well executed targeting strategy and solid clinical support.”
Mapping GIM is a burdensome clinical challenge, given the large size of the stomach and the need to adequately visualize the gastric mucosa to rule out suspicious lesions and determine GIM extent. Dr. Kim has developed his own adjunctive protocol used in tandem with the standard protocol to provide the best care to his patients. His total procedure time takes only 10 to 12 minutes for a full visual inspection with Cellvizio, including completing multiple gastric biopsies using the Sydney Protocol.
