Vygon values life with its market-leading neonatology medical devices
Vygon designs and manufactures single-use medical devices for healthcare professionals, helping them deliver the best outcomes for patients. Neonatology is at the heart of the company’s offering, providing solutions for respiratory care, vascular access and enteral feeding.
Vygon is a world leader in manufacturing single-use medical and surgical products. Founded in 1962 by Pierre Simonet in Ecouen, France, the company has grown exponentially over a period of nearly 40 years and is synonymous with quality and reliability when it comes to providing medical and surgical products for the healthcare industry. Vygon is at the forefront of technological and market research and uses the latest advances in technology at all levels of the business.
It designs and manufactures products for healthcare professionals, helping clinicians deliver the best outcomes for patients. Offering a range of products for a number of clinical specialties, Vygon’s five business units include: Critical Care, Intravascular Therapies, Anesthesia & Emergency, Cardiovascular & Surgery and Neonatology.
Vygon values life through its care and respect for patients, whatever their age, and neonatology and paediatrics is at the heart of Vygon’s medical offering. When it comes to respiratory care, vascular access and enteral feeding, Vygon has developed a number of products to help raise the chances of pre-term infants surviving in the first weeks and months of birth. Vygon’s advances in neonatal devices mean there is a range of products available for medical professionals. They include umbilical catheters, neonatal longlines, cannulas, gastro duodenal feeding tubes, the Neohelp thermal heat loss prevention suit, and the new innovative Surfcath catheters.
When it comes to neonatology, there have been huge advances in specialist care and survival rates for infants born prematurely. This is in part down to the creation of dedicated medical devices for neonates, such as those offered by Vygon. Historically, it would have been rare for a pre-term infant to survive, but today survival rates are thankfully much higher.
Babies who are born at around five-months need specific round-the-clock medical care using highly specialised equipment. Caring for an infant who may weigh as little as 500 grams comes with huge challenges for medical teams. A premature infant may experience breathing difficulties and cardiac arrhythmia, be distressed and difficult to calm, suffer from digestive disorders and be more susceptible to mental and physical damage in the long-term. In the first few weeks of birth, it is vital that they receive optimal care by highly trained teams to give them the best chance of survival. Vygon has designed its medical devices to fit pre-term babies specific physiological features and tiny morphology.
When it comes to delivering the correct drug doses to neonates, accuracy is key. Administer too little and this may result in a lack of efficacy, overdosing the infant may result in harmful side effects. With a huge amount of oral medications being given to pre-term babies on a daily basis, using the right equipment can make the difference and reduces the side effects’ risks. In 2005, Vygon developed a safe enteral feeding system called the Nutrisafe2. The device avoids any risk of misconnection with the vascular access, delivers the most accurate doses of the required medication and stops the infant from suffering any unnecessary distress.
Another consideration when it comes to neonates is Respiratory Distress Syndrome (RDS), a breathing disorder that results from surfactant deficiency and underdeveloped lungs. Many infants will suffer from RDS; the best way to treat it is via surfactant administration. Typically, an undedicated thin tube will be inserted through the vocal cords with Magill forceps to treat the disorder. But using Magill forceps on a pre-term infant can result in damaging the infant’s mouth and mucosa as it is a large medical device not best suited to the infant’s tiny anatomy.
With the help of Dr Kribs from University Hospital of Cologne (Uniklinik Köln, Germany), Vygon co-invented Surfcath, a thin, highly manoeuvrable catheter used for effective surfactant administration. The use of this device results in better outcomes for the patient and removes the need of using forceps, streamlining the procedure and vastly improving patient care for pre-term infants.
Vygon’s market-leading devices offer medical professionals the best opportunities to treat and care for some of the most vulnerable neonatal infants. The company continues its ongoing work in developing innovative single-use medical devices in a number of clinical specialties, helping to protect and save lives of patients all over the world.
Christelle Letourmy
Principal International Marketing Manager, Obstetrics Neonatology Enteral
