Eximis Surgical: Filling a Gap in Laparoscopic Tissue Removal

In June 2017, early-stage start-up Eximis Surgical LLC was the winner of a $25,000 award as the top company in the value category of the Medtech Innovator Competition. MedTech Innovator is a global, nonprofit competition and accelerator for companies in the medical device, digital health, and diagnostic industries. Eximis Surgical made the cut—from 600 companies originally vetted—into the final four, and was ultimately deemed to have the best medical value proposition for its laparoscopic specimen removal device, offering a replacement—with improvements— for the tarnished morcellator product category.

The history of morcellators is notorious, largely because of the efforts of Amy Reed, MD, an anesthesiologist, and her husband, Hooman Noorchasm, MD, a surgeon. Dr. Reed died in May 2017 from an aggressive type of cancer that was spread as a result of the removal of her uterus four years earlier, which was done with a morcellator, a rotating cutter in common use at the me that was designed to shred ssue so that large specimens could be removed through small incisions. The morcellator was never intended to be used to remove cancerous tumors; however, cancer sometimes lurks undetected, and what are thought to be benign uterine fibroids sometimes turn out to be malignant tumors.