Improving Surgical Oncology

A medical device company with the goal to improve the surgical care for cancer patients.

Our Goal

SurGuide support surgeons in their aim to achieve complete tumor removal, which is the biggest challenge in cancer surgery. Incomplete tumor removal, negatively affects patient outcome and necessitates additional treatment¹.

SurGuide’s technology addresses the problem that the information about the result of the operation becomes available only after several days. SurGuide’s technology will enable inspection of the resected tissue to determine if a tumor has been completely removed.

The result of this inspection is reported to the surgeon, while the patient is still in the operating room. The report shows at which locations the tumor has not been completely removed. Based on this critical feedback the surgeon can decide to perform an additional resection at the indicated locations.

In this way SurGuide’s technology will help to increase the rate of complete tumor resections.

Oral cavity cancer

SurGuide’s first focus is oral cavity cancer. Complete tumor removal in oral cavity cancer surgery requires resection of the tumor with a margin of more than 5mm of surrounding healthy tissue². Our technology is not limited to oral cavity cancer. Other cancer types will follow after successful market introduction.

350.000 new patients / year

~350.000 new patients are diagnosed with oral cavity cancer each year. The average 5-yr survival rate is <50%, and is particularly low in advanced stages of disease^3,4.

In <20%, the tumor is adequately removed

Less than 20% of surgical procedures for oral cancer result in complete tumor removal, according to the latest publications. This results in poorer prognosis and necessitates additional treatment with radiotherapy or chemotherapy^5,6.