Novadaq Technologies Inc. has announced that Bruce Ferguson, MD, released the first results from the SPY VICTORIA Cardiac Surgery Registry (“VICTORIA” or “Registry”) during the Society of Thoracic Surgery (STS) meeting in San Francisco. Dr. Ferguson is the Registry’s Principal Investigator and is Professor and Chairman, Department of Cardiovascular Sciences, East Carolina Heart Institute at East Carolina University. VICTORIA was established by Novadaq to collect clinical and image data for the purposes of comparing the clinical outcomes of patients undergoing coronary artery bypass graft ("CABG") surgery with SPY imaging to the STS National Cardiac Database ("STS Database"), a well established cardiac surgery outcomes benchmark. To-date, eight cardiac surgery centers have contributed to VICTORIA and data from nearly 350 patients has been submitted for analysis. In his report, Dr. Ferguson released data that compared the outcomes of the first 144 patients enrolled in the Registry to the expected outcomes for CABG as reported by the STS Database. He concluded that: •the patient population in VICTORIA is not substantively different from those patients in the STS database in demographics, medical histories or co-morbid conditions; and •aggregate data suggest that the use of SPY in patients undergoing CABG resulted in consistently better outcomes as compared to the national benchmark for major morbidities including stroke, death, post-operative renal failure, prolonged ventilation, sternal wound infection and length of stay; and •the reduction in the incidence of major adverse events in those patients imaged with SPY can result in significant cost savings for hospitals. Dr. Ferguson commented, "It is not at all surprising that the presence of intra-operative imaging to guide and confirm success at the point of care might be expected to improve the overall quality of outcomes of revascularization procedures as it enables surgeons to perform the best possible procedure for each individual patient. It also allows surgeons to address any revascularization issues before closing the chest incision. It follows that the benefits derived from the use of SPY, compared to procedures where it is not used, would naturally drive down the short- and possibly long-term graft failure rates and increase the overall effectiveness of CABG surgery. These interim data from VICTORIA confirm the logic of that thinking. Indeed, evidence of the value of SPY imaging continues to mount." Dr. Arun Menawat, Novadaq’s President and Chief Executive Officer, said, "We continue to be very encouraged by the data that has been reported from a number of studies that have shown that the use of SPY results in better clinical outcomes compared to procedures where it has not been used. The Registry data is especially compelling as the comparative population is the absolute gold standard in cardiac surgery - the STS Database. It is well known that improvements in clinical outcomes result in cost savings which, in today’s environment, is critical to all hospitals. I want to thank all of the surgeons and scientists, like Dr. Ferguson, who have helped pioneer SPY and continue to work hard to drive the adoption of this technology. Because of their efforts, the lives of many patients with severe heart disease who undergo CABG will undoubtedly be both lengthened and improved."