December 7, 2022 – MolecuLight is featured in Vizient’s newly released Tech Watch publication as a key technology for visualizing bacterial load and its locations and helping to reduce surgical site infections. The article, “Fluorescence Imaging: New technology enables point-of-care surgical wound bacterial assessment” is featured in Vizient’s Tech Watch (Medical Device) Volume 3 issue.
Early and accurate diagnosis of post-surgical bacterial loads and infection is critical to enable prompt treatment before the infection worsens. Some cases require lab testing to accurately diagnose the bacteria colonizing the wound, allowing the offending bacteria to grow and spread and delay effective treatments. Test results can take days to weeks to be available and, if positive, could be too late to prevent infection.
Clinicians need real-time diagnostic tools that they can use at the point-of-care to help provide immediate information on the state of the wound and possible growth of bacterial burden. The article argues that MolecuLight imaging helps eliminate unnecessary subjectivity in assessing wounds for the presence of harmful bacteria by allowing quick and accurate visualization of locations of elevated bacteria load in wounds, along with clinical signs and symptoms. As such, it provides “invaluable real-time information to inform clinical decision-making”.
A recent per-reviewed study supports this position in demonstrating the benefits of using MolecuLight to help clinician visualize bacterial burden in surgical site wounds:
- 76% of surgical sites in the study that reach the stage of referral to a wound specialist had clinically significant bacterial loads (104 to 109 CFU/g), however only 6.8% exhibited symptoms of infection, resulting in delayed infection management.
- Point-of-care fluorescence imaging (using the MolecuLight i:X device) for detecting high bacterial loads improved sensitivity by 5.7-fold compared to clinical signs and symptoms alone.
- Clinician experience with fluorescence imaging and interpretation (>200 imaging sessions) increased sensitivity of fluorescence imaging to 11.3-fold higher than clinical signs and symptoms alone, and accuracy to 2.6-fold higher.