Medical Manufacturing and Outsourcing Special Report - November 2021 - 18

APPLICATION BRIEFS
Additive Manufacturing Offers New Hope for Treating Women's
Pelvic Floor Disorders
he most valuable innovations
often arise when forward-thinking
people see a problem in the world and
then strive to create better solutions.
That was the case for Derek Sham,
founder and CEO of Cosm Medical,
who - while working in the field of
urology diagnostics - sought better
ways of managing and treating pelvic
floor disorders after watching his
grandmother cope with pelvic organ
prolapse. This common, painful, and
stigmatized condition occurs when
weakened or injured pelvic floor muscles
or vaginal and connective tissues cause
one or more of a patient's pelvic organs
to slip down from the correct position.
Physicians use a four-stage system
to describe the severity of a patient's
pelvic prolapse. In the last stage, the
organs are entirely out of the vaginal
cavity. " When we found out she had
prolapsed, she was already at stage
3 or stage 4, " Sham says. " And in my
mind, that would not ever happen in
a society where pelvic floor disorders
are recognized as an issue. "
That lack of attention has led to
countless women suffering in silence or
enduring subpar interventions. Surgery
is one option, but it is costly and often
doesn't yield permanent results.
The nonsurgical treatment is to use
a pessary - a device inserted into
the vagina to reduce prolapse and
support pelvic tissues and organs or
compress the urethra to stop urinary
incontinence. Pessaries are one of the
oldest documented medical devices and
date back almost 4,000 years to 1850
BCE with the Egyptians. After the advent
of medical-grade silicone, pessaries
have remained largely unchanged for
the past 50 years. Fit for patients by
doctors through clinical experience and
trial and error, pessaries come in more
than 100 different shapes and sizes.¹
Sham knew there was a better way.
" There are 100 different pessaries
because every woman is different, " Sham
says. " It's really about modernizing care
18 NOVEMBER 2021
Cosm Medical's digital urogynecology aims to modernize pessary fitting with its custom Gynethotics
like this one. (Courtesy of Cosm Medical)
T
Cosm Medical uses a novel ultrasound imaging method to scan the pelvic floor. (Courtesy of
Cosm Medical)
by bringing precision and personalization
to make a difference in each woman's
life who wears these devices, because
over 10 million pessaries are sold globally
each year. About a third of women
currently fail the fitting process; half will
stop using them within a year or two and
over half get complications with longterm
use. " Complications for pessary
use include chronic pain, bleeding,
constipation, urinary obstruction,
infections, and tissue abrasion.²
A Prevalent Issue
Pelvic floor disorders are not an
everyday conversation topic, but
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Medical Manufacturing and Outsourcing Special Report - November 2021

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