MeritCare Medical Center is a fully accredited, integrated health system — the largest group practice and the largest hospital in North Dakota with 583 licensed beds in two locations and over 19,000 surgical cases performed per year. The department of cardiothoracic surgery performs approximately 600 open heart surgeries and 150 thoracic cases per year.

In early 2003, Greg Lammle, PA-C, attended a national cardiac surgery conference to seek out a tissue sealing and dividing method to meet the hospital’s needs. At this time, he learned about Starion Instruments. Starion’s STLS Thermal Ligating Shears feature the company’s proprietary thermal welding technology, which focuses thermal energy to simultaneously seal and divide soft tissue. This reduces thermal spread, which minimizes the risk of inadvertent collateral injury.

After meeting with Starion at the conference, Lammle began using the STLS Thermal Ligating Shears in the OR in a matter of days and was very impressed by the results.

"The Starion device allows me to harvest radial arteries without causing any thermal spread to the artery or collateral damage to sensory nerves in people’s arms," said Lammle. "Our patients are a lot happier. Many don’t even realize that they had vessels taken out of their arms. It has provided an immense recovery benefit for our patients."

To further protect patients from potential injury, the STLS Thermal Ligating Shears has a built-in safety feature to prevent inadvertent cutting during a procedure. The only time that it will activate is when its jaws are closed.

The Starion device also addressed the teams’ other concerns. It is simple and easy to set up and use, featuring a compact controller, a single cable and a finger trigger built into the handle of the shears, so there are no secondary cables or attachments. Lammle and his team have dramatically improved their efficiency. They are saving three to four hours per week in set up and clean up time and they have cut their procedure time by half.

"It is a simple, elegant device," said Lammle. "All you have to do is open it up and plug it in. It is that quick. And clean up is the same. Since the instrument is disposable, I just hand everything off to the staff and we are done. There is nothing to clean up and very little to store."

The device also proved to be reliable.

"We just plug the device in and it works as it should every time," said Lammle. "This has dramatically reduced our procedure times."

Due to the safety, simplicity and reliability, Lammle and his team experienced a seamless transition to the Starion device, and training new staff was easy. "In about 10 cases or so it became second nature for us to use," said Lammle. "We have also found that it is easy to train new physician assistants in the use of the Starion device."

Lastly, with the Starion device, MeritCare has also seen a reduction in costs associated with radial artery harvesting.