Challenge
Post dural puncture headache (PDPH) occurs in up to 80% of patients who experience inadvertent dural puncture during epidural anaesthesia. The headache is often accompanied by neck stiffness, photophobia, nausea, or subjective hearing symptoms, and can last for multiple days. These can lead to mothers missing the first days with the newborn. The precise etiology of PDPH is unclear, but is thought to relate to leakage of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) through the dural hole created by the needle.
Opportunity
Currently, there are no immediate treatments for PDPH. The only available solutions are bed-rest and blood-patches/sphenopalatine ganglion block, with the latter options only being administered if symptomes do not alleviate after 3 days.
Solution
From a collaboration between Instituto de Biomecánica de Valencia (IBV) and FISABIO, a patch (incl. insertion kit) has been produced to stop CSF loss a few instants after an accidental dural puncture. This invention represents the first ever immediate treatment of accidental dural punctures, and prevents patients (such as new mothers) from being in pain for multiple days after their epidurals.
Status
The feasibility of patch and insertion kit has been tested in a sheep model study. For the patch to reach the patients, further product developments need to be performed and a regulatory clinical study.
Meet the team
Jorge Cortell
Venture Partner
Jorge joined NLC in December 2021 as a Venture Partner. Before joining NLC, Jorge founded and managed Kanteron Systems, a Computational Bioinformatics company. Formerly, he was a member of the European Commission Expert Group and a university lecturer (UPV and UOC). Jorge graduated in Computer Science from the University of Oxford and has completed postgraduate studies in Entrepreneurship at MIT and Clinical Genomics at the University of Valencia. Currently, he is an Innovation Fellow at Harvard University.