In a study comparing Philips’ Fiber Optic RealShape (FORS)-enabled guidewire with its enhanced successor LumiGuide, researchers found that the latter was associated with improved technical success and reduced procedure times.
Authors Paula Huertas, Carlos Timaran (UT Southwestern, Dallas, USA) and colleagues also report that the ability to use different commercially available catheters with LumiGuide “results in enhanced convenience and lower radiation exposure, thereby improving efficiency and safety”. Huertas recently presented these findings at the 50th annual meeting of the Southern Association for Vascular Surgery (SAVS 2026; 21–24 January, Paradise Island, the Bahamas).
Huertas and colleagues’ research stems from a need to move away from the primary reliance on fluoroscopy for target vessel cannulation during fenestrated and branched endovascular aneurysm repair (F/BEVAR).
Philips introduced FORS to address this clinical challenge. The researchers note in their abstract that the technology uses pulses of light refracted through optical fibres to generate real-time renderings of wires and catheters in three-dimensional (3D) space allowing their navigation without radiation.
The LumiGuide, the researchers continue, is an enhanced longer version of the standard FORS guidewire that is coupled with a 3D Hub connector to improve visualisation of commercially available catheters.
In their study, Huertas and colleagues aimed to compare procedural outcomes and radiation exposure between the FORS-enabled guidewire versus LumiGuide for F/BEVAR.
To do so, the team collected data from 218 F/BEVARs (129 standard FORS, 89 LumiGuide) that included 931 target vessel cannulations (590 with standard FORS and 341 with LumiGuide).
The researchers defined technical success as the successful cannulation of the target vessels achieved exclusively with FORS technology. For both standard FORS and LumiGuide, they compared technical success rates, procedure times, cannulation durations, fluoroscopy times, and cumulative dose-area products (DAP). Welch’s t-test was used for continuous variables, while a z-test was applied for proportions.
Huertas and colleagues note that patient characteristics did not demonstrate significant differences between groups.
Sharing the results of the study at SAVS 2026, Huertas revealed that technical success was 56% with standard FORS vs. 79% with LumiGuide (p<0.001). In addition, compared to standard FORS, the use of LumiGuide resulted in reduced navigation time per target vessel (6.4±7.4 minutes vs. 6.7±9.6; p=0.6), DAP per target vessel (3.2±5.3Gy·cm² vs. 3.36±9.3, p=0.79), procedure time (257±91 minutes vs. 298±100; p=0.002), fluoroscopy time (58±38 minutes vs. 80±40; p=0.01) and contrast dose (130±40mL vs. 150±50; P=.05). Finally, the presenter shared that cumulative DAP remained similar between groups (59±38Gy·cm² for LumiGuide vs. 64±43 with standard FORS; p=0.5).
