At this year’s Charing Cross Symposium, Cordis is launching the Outback Elite re-entry catheter, an enhanced version of the Outback re-entry catheter that received the CE mark earlier this week. According to the company, Outback Elite provides more control and precision and includes additional features to enable re-entry into the most complex lesions whilst facilitating positioning and delivery.

Yesterday, Thomas Zeller, Bad Krozingen, Germany, a user of the Outback re-entry catheter, spoke to CX Daily News about his experience with the device and his expectations about this new iteration.

Amongst the new features of Outback Elite are single-handed torque and deployment—the torque control is located closer to the needle actuator and the longer handle provides a more efficient slider mechanism—a robust nitinol cannula for re-entry in very complex lesions and a lubricious hydrophilic coating to help delivery.

In addition, the Outback Elite is available in a 120cm shaft length as the previous catheter but is also being launched with an 80cm shaft length indicated for ipsilateral antegrade or iliac procedures. The new size offers the advantage of having less shaft length to handle outside of the patient, increasing precision on the re-entry site.

The Outback Elite follows the successful performance of the Outback catheter. In a randomised controlled trial by Roberto Gandini et al comparing re-entry with Outback vs. manual re-entry in chronic total occlusions in the superficial femoral artery, the device achieved 100% re-entry rate vs. 42.3% with the manual re-entry technique. It also showed shorter procedure and fluoroscopy times.

Kristen Rock, global product director at Cordis, told CX Daily News, “Outback Elite’s ergonomic handle and added shaft sizes provide physicians with more control, meaning they can easily pinpoint exactly where they want the re-entry site to be.”

The Outback re-entry device will be used in a live case today at the CX Live Peripheral Arterial Cases – SFA and popliteal in the Grey Learning Centre.