What’s so special about Apollo Endosurgery’s stomach-shrinking weight loss tech?

The Apollo Endosurgery OverStitch Sx endoscopic suturing system [Image courtesy of Apollo Endosurgery]

Apollo Endosurgery — set to be purchased by Boston Scientific for $615 million — develops new devices and minimally invasive procedures for weight loss.

The procedure is called endoscopic sleeve gastroplasty (ESG) and the device that made it possible is the OverStitch endoscopic suturing system.

Austin, Texas-based Apollo Endosurgery first won 510(k) clearance for OverStitch in 2008, with successive clearances for improved designs over the years. Most recently, in July the FDA granted de novo clearance for Apollo Endosurgery’s Apollo ESG, Apollo ESG Sx, Apollo REVISE and Apollo REVISE Sx systems. They’re the first FDA-authorized devices for ESG and endoscopic bariatric revision procedures.

Medical Design & Outsourcing spoke with Apollo Endosurgery Chief Medical Officer Dr. Christo…

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Endiatx’s pill-sized robot sees and swims inside the stomach

Endiatx co-founder and CEO Torrey Smith with PillBot [Photo by Hardy Wilson for MDO]

An unconventional CEO and his team take aim at endoscopies with faster, cheaper stomach imaging — and that’s just the start. Welcome to the era of tiny robots inside the body.

As he prepared to swallow his robot for the first time, Torrey Smith’s doctors warned that the battery was his greatest threat.

If the capsule came apart and the battery burned the tissue lining his stomach, it would only be the beginning of a very bad experience.

“I was just hoping that we would get any kind of a positive signal that we were on the right track,” Smith, co-founder and CEO of Endiatx, said of the June 2020 test. “At that time, our radio bandwidth was so limited. We were pushing 48 pixels square of grayscale, not even color, at just a few frames per second. The worst video quality you could imagine —…

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