Never underestimate what a particularly tough week can do for re-evaluating your motivation.? I operate every day on patients young, old, healthy, and sick.? But this week one patient stuck with me.? A dad coming into the ED with his wife and daughter at the county hospital.? Nice folks, but he had a massive pulmonary embolus (PE) and was DNR.? After rushing him to the IR suite, he desaturated on the table sweating profusely and gasping for air.? We put him on 60L O2 per min hi-flow nasal cannula, BP tanked to 50/30, and HR 130 as his heart desperately tried to pump blood into his lungs against the clots that shot up to his pulmonary arteries.? I was having flashbacks to the 20-year old high speed motor vehicle accident patient I was operating on a few weeks ago who died on my operating table, and who in the end needed a priest more than a surgeon.
So like always, we called Bradford Boring from #Inari, and he showed up faster than I could count with a medical device that worked.? We pulled strings of massive silly putty-looking clot out of this patient's heart with the #Flowtriever, and stabilized him.? We all took a deep sigh of relief, and I went into the bathroom afterwards and cried.? This was the worst PE I had ever seen, and it wasn't just my team and I who helped rescue this patient, but also Brad and his team at Inari because they placed their focus on developing a medical device that worked well for patients, instead of scheming to get the fastest haphazard FDA approval for a less clinically-usable device that looks good on paper to misinformed investors and pushing it down the throats of physicians with heavy marketing; a misguided and ineffective approach I see all too often in the industry.?
Since coming up with the idea of RadioClash, Inc.'s #ablation device that enables #enhancedelectroporationtherapy for #cancer 6 years ago, I've always let my patients be my motivation.? I've learned fast about IP strategy, FDA, corporate finance, design history files, fundraising, and building a fantastic team along the way, but at my core I am a physician.? I try to be the kind of doctor my 1st-year medical student self would be proud of 10 years ago.? With that guiding light, I seek to build RadioClash focusing on a product with the patient at the center, and is recognized as such by my colleagues.? There's a reason why the majority of our investors are practicing physicians who personally want to use our ablation probe.? This is our community, our OR, and we will not use what we do not like.? So when we get comments that I don't fit the typical profile of a CEO, as a practicing MD, I take that as the best compliment of the day.? Because having someone in the OR who is solidly embedded in the end-user community is heavily advantageous compared to someone in the board room.
What's your motivation?
#RadioClash looks forward to seeing you at #LSN #RESI #JPM in SF this Tuesday 1/14.? Reach out to us for availability to schedule a meeting.
