Asan Medical Center in Seoul is deploying AVIAR, Korea's first commercially approved robotic system for percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), into full clinical use.
The hospital announced Wednesday that a team led by Professor Ahn Jeong-min of the cardiology department successfully treated a 56-year-old patient surnamed Park, who had been suffering from angina, using the AVIAR system. Angina is a condition in which the coronary arteries supplying blood to the heart muscle narrow, reducing blood flow and causing sudden chest tightness or dull pain. Park underwent a precise robotic procedure even for complex lesions and was discharged in good health just one day after the procedure without complications.
PCI is a highly advanced procedure performed on patients with narrowed coronary arteries caused by conditions such as angina and myocardial infarction. A thin catheter is inserted through blood vessels in the thigh (femoral artery) or wrist (radial artery) to reach the coronary arteries, where a balloon is used to widen the vessel and a stent is deployed. Because physicians must perform the procedure while viewing real-time X-ray imaging, they face significant physical strain from prolonged radiation exposure and wearing heavy lead shielding garments. Asan Medical Center developed AVIAR in 2019 to overcome these limitations.
