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EBS Expands Commercialization of Its NEXT WAVE™ Non-Invasive Electrical Brain Stimulation Device Designed to Expand the Visual Field of Patients with Impaired Vision Caused by Glaucoma, Stroke and Other Neurological DiseasesBERLIN --(Business Wire)-- EBS Technologies ("EBS") announced today it has opened its first ophthalmologic clinical site in Germany that is offering the use of the EBS NEXT WAVE (News - Alert)™ brain stimulation device designed to expand the visual field of patients with impaired vision caused by glaucoma, stroke and other neurological diseases. Last week, EBS announced that a clinical study ("Brain functional connectivity network breakdown and restoration in blindness") published in the highly respected journal Neurology® validates non-invasive brain stimulation for restoring partial vision to an impaired eye; the Company's NEXT WAVE™ system is a non-invasive brain stimulation device that is designed to expand the visual field of patients with impaired vision caused by glaucoma, stroke or other neurological disorders. NEXT WAVE™ is approved for sale in Europe. CLICK HERE FOR ANIMATION (ENGLISH) CLICK HERE FOR ANIMATION (GERMAN) "Electrical bran stimulation could have the potential to reactivate residual capabilities of brain function," said Prof. Dr. med. Carl Erb, a leading German ophthalmologist and renowned glaucoma specialist at the Eye Clinic Wittenberg Platz, Berlin. "We expect that Next Wave therapy will be offered to patients at many additional neuroophthalmologic and neurorehabilitation clinics throughout Europe. Consequently, we are pleased that our institution is among those that are pioneering this interesting medical advance." "There is an overwhelming and unmet clinical need for treating vision impairment caused by a variety of different neurological disorders, such as neuropathy of the optic nerve. Indeed, three out of five persons who are disabled from impaired vision as a result of optic nerve neuropathy, for example, or brain injury or stroke, are potentially treatable with our NEXT WAVE™ therapy, which is why we are getting enquiries from patients from not only Europe but also the United States and Asia," said Ulf Pommerening, CEO of EBS Technologies. "I now have hope," said Hans-Joerg Hehli, 58, who lost his central vision due to an eye infarct (AION), a medical condition involving a relative loss of vision due to damage to the optic nerve, the result of insufficient blood supply. Mr. Hehli had been unable to work as project manager for a machine tool company because of his near-total central vision loss in both eyes. Then, less than two weeks after receiving 10 consecutive days of 40-minute treatments with NEXT WAVE™ therapy, Mr. Hehli says his central vision field improved significantly; using the sophisticated methodology of a computerized visual field analyzer (Octopus ® 900), doctors at Charité Berlin confirmed that 33 absolute visual defects have been reduced to two in Mr. Hehli's left eye and 48 "relative visual defects" reduced to 17 in his right eye after NEXT WAVE™ therapy. Mr. Hehli believes he is now at "the start of an improvement process. Given that there was nothing else available to me, I am very thankful and very optimistic." In June 2013, EBS announced the results of a multi-center, 82-patient clinical trial of its NEXT WAVE™ brain stimulation device. About one-half of the clinical trial patients were given a 40-minute treatment protocol for 10 consecutive days with the NEXT WAVE™ device. With an average increase of 24 percent of the total visual field, NEXT WAVE™-treated patients showed significantly better improvements of their total visual field compared with patients in the control group who did not receive NEXT WAVE™ stimulation. All patients had vision impairment lasting at least six months prior to the clinical trial and had exhausted all standard therapeutic options to improve their vision.
About NEXT WAVE™ NOTE: NEXT WAVE™ is approved for sale in Europe; it is not approved for sale or investigational use in the U.S. |
