When I first heard about this six or seven years ago, I thought, “Wow, this is radical.”

It’s a bit crazy, for lack of a better word.

Wow, like how come no one has thought about this before?

When you think about all the medical conditions that we treat, and I say this as a cardiologist, there is no ambiguity in my mind.

One of the most devastating things, way past most cardiovascular issues, is actually stroke.

People’s loss of function, their inability to communicate, inability to take care of themselves, potential cognitive decline — this is something that scares everyone.

By the year 2050, we think the burden of AF is going to increase by 60%, and with it there’ll be a large increase in AF-related strokes, and the impact that it’ll have on our healthcare systems will be grave.

Anticoagulants are a two-edged sword in that they do have a great treatment effect in reducing stroke in patients with AF, but if you try to escalate their potency, you have offsetting bleeding that offsets the benefit that they provide.

So, patients with atrial fibrillation who suffer a stroke despite taking a blood thinner — currently we do not have, you know, an effective treatment to prevent another stroke from happening in these patients.

For certain, I was in the group of most clinicians who were very focused on anticoagulation drug therapy to tackle this problem.

And then when someone says something that is very novel, that had not occurred to you, why hadn’t anyone thought of this?

And it was just a real moment of, “That is very intriguing. This is something that deserves further exploration.”

The VINE device has had an interesting journey, right? Let’s put carotid filters into patients to prevent stroke.

And I think what started with a pretty simple idea has evolved dramatically over the last 10 years.

It’s kind of like a seed that grows in your mind, and that when you first hear about it, it seems like a pretty radical new approach.

The fact that we only saw one LVO stroke in 300 patient-years of follow-up across CAPTURE 1 and CAPTURE 2 is absolutely remarkable.

So, INTERCEPT is one of the largest device trials for stroke reduction.

So, I expect if this trial is positive, we’ll establish a new paradigm that will totally alter and improve outcomes.

First, for the patients where there’s currently no good alternative for this large unmet need that we discussed earlier, there is a massive potential benefit that they could get as being part of the study.

So, having their patients enter the INTERCEPT Study allows them to have access to a device that could provide benefit that would not otherwise be eligible for them.

And historically, or even at present, we often outsource certain procedures like percutaneous left atrial appendage occlusion to other specialties like cardiology, whereas the VINE Filter System allows us to actually keep that within the neurosciences, expand our own divisions and departments for the betterment of our patients and for the expansion and development of our field.

I think participating in INTERCEPT is great in that you are contributing to a meaningful research endeavor, and you may be able to be part of the solution for stroke prevention in very high-risk patients.

Most people who have joined our efforts were hesitant at first.

But I would say, allow us to have a conversation with you. Invite us to have a talk with your group where we go through the data, answer all your questions before you make up your mind.

You could be part of history, frankly, by participating in this study and helping, working together with our global network, and trying to prove the efficacy of this device through successful completion of INTERCEPT.

So, I run a consortium in Canada that is focused on improving the ecosystem for doing clinical trials.

So, one of our patient partners, she showed a picture of her son at the age of two who had been diagnosed with cancer.

And both her and her husband were given the most unimaginable news that their child was going to die, that there was no treatment for their child.

This woman, who was a real force of nature, rejected this position. She did her own research online.

And she eventually found a place that was doing a novel clinical trial in this cancer that her son had.

They would end up relocating to bring their son to this location where this trial was happening and enrolling their child in this trial.

And the next picture she would show is of her son, 17 years of age and healthy.

The wonderful part of the story and the message is: at times, clinical trials save lives, even when you’re told there is no hope.

That doesn’t happen every day, but it does happen.