Focalist Users' Briefing

“The Focalist takes away the complexity of access.”
"So I'm Kyle Wood. I'm an endourologist, I did two years of fellowship for stone surgery I’m at the University of Alabama, associate professor. And then I’m a vice chair of research. I have a real passion about how to change the world and do things better for kidney stone patients”
"I think from the very beginning, it's challenging because you're getting somebody that has complex anatomy or complex stone disease."
"It was completely a surprise. Even when I was first thinking about using Focalist, it was something that I did not think would change my practice as rapidly as it did."
"I was dead set on not doing anything different."
"I was trained for fluoroscopy, trained to get my own access and trained to do fairly large PCNL... and I would argue I was quite good at it. And then Dr. Chi, Thomas Chi came in as our new chair of our department and he said, ‘Why don't you try something different? Why don't you try ultrasound?’ Now I hadn't had an ultrasound probe in my hand in 10 years, so the concept of doing something different was that unknown was a little scary. And then also thinking, well, what would be the learning curve for me and why would I give up something I'm really good at?"
"The very first time I was so convinced that I was going to have to go to fluoroscopy or something, I asked Tom Chi, my mentor there, to come into the operating room with me. And I remember the first time he was standing behind me, I put the ultrasound probe on, I set up the Focalist and first stick got access and he literally just said to me, ‘You don't need me anymore.’"
"And it is now completely; I don't have fluoroscopy in my room. I'm doing everything supine, choosing certain patients to send home and Focalist is being used for every one of my access."
"I would describe it as that domino effect. What I needed was the Focalist to then change a lot of the other aspects of my practice... So the Focalist allowed me to get access under ultrasound guidance with confidence, it allowed me to miniaturize my surgery, which then I think resulted in less concern about blood loss, which then allowed me to do tubeless, which then allowed me to do same day discharge."
"The Focalist makes the access simpler. I mean, that's all there is to it."
"I think my end product's better for me as the user, but also for the patient that's receiving the surgery."
“Want ultimately is for our patients to have a very low risk surgery that clears them entirely of their kidney stones and then allows us to get them back to their life as rapidly as possible so they never have to go through this again."