iCHOR Vascular, Simply Taking a Proven Surgical Fogarty Sweep into the Endovascular Labs
For decades, the Fogarty balloon technique has been one of the most reliable methods for removing vascular clots in open surgery. Ichor Vascular is now bringing that same proven approach into the modern endovascular lab with its innovative iSWEEP Mechanical Thrombectomy System, enabling physicians to perform safer, faster, and minimally invasive clot removal.
What inspired the creation of Ichor Vascular and the development of its core technology platform?
The creation of Ichor Vascular was inspired by a clear clinical gap the founders observed while working with multiple thrombectomy technologies in pre-clinical labs. During this process, they evaluated aspiration, metal cages, maceration, and other clot-removal tools, yet consistently found that the decades-old Fogarty balloon surgical technique still delivered superior clot removal and vessel integrity. This realization sparked a simple but powerful question: why couldn’t that proven surgical mechanism be translated into a minimally invasive, endovascular solution?
Ichor Vascular was ultimately founded to address large unmet needs in treating peripheral vascular occlusions such as peripheral arterial disease and deep vein thrombosis, which affect millions of patients worldwide. The company’s core technology platform, the iSWEEP Mechanical Thrombectomy System, was developed to convert the reliable Fogarty balloon sweep method from open surgery into a minimally invasive endovascular procedure.
The goal behind this innovation was to provide physicians with simple, versatile, and cost-effective tools that improve patient outcomes while reducing reliance on surgery or thrombolytic drugs, ultimately helping enable faster and safer clot removal that equally addresses health economics.
How does your technology help physicians treat peripheral vascular conditions such as DVT and PAD more effectively?
Ichor Vascular’s technology helps physicians treat peripheral vascular conditions such as DVT and PAD more effectively by combining the familiarity of proven surgical methods with the efficiency of modern minimally invasive tools. The company’s iSWEEP Mechanical Thrombectomy platform is designed as an all-in-one system that converts the trusted Fogarty balloon sweep technique into a simple endovascular procedure, allowing physicians to remove clots without the need for open surgery, thrombolytic drugs, or complex capital equipment.
The system uses a combination of embolic protection, balloon sweeping, and funnel-based clot capture to safely remove thrombus while reducing the risk of distal embolization, vessel damage, and blood loss. This approach supports consistent and predictable clot removal across a wide range of vessel sizes and clot types, helping physicians treat both arterial and venous peripheral occlusions with a singular system.
By offering a simple setup, continuous vessel access, and workflow-friendly design, the technology helps physicians work more efficiently while improving patient outcomes and reducing treatment trade-offs often seen with traditional mechanical or drug-based approaches.
What makes your “all-in-one” clot removal approach different from traditional surgical or drug-based treatments?
Ichor Vascular’s all-in-one clot removal approach is designed to deliver the proven effectiveness of surgical clot removal while eliminating many of the limitations associated with open surgery or drug-based therapies without any trade-offs. The iCHOR system replicates the core mechanism of traditional surgical clot extraction but delivers it through a minimally invasive, endovascular solution.
Unlike drug-based treatments that can increase bleeding risk or require extended monitoring, the system provides on-demand embolic protection and flow arrest, which helps minimize blood loss and reduce the risk of distal embolization. The compliant balloon design is built to adapt across different vessel anatomies, enabling physicians to use a single device across a wide range of vessel diameters and clot morphology. The platform also allows continuous sheath and wire access, supporting multiple clot-removal passes which saves tremendous time during the thrombectomy procedure.
Because the system does not require large capital equipment and comes ready in a single package, it simplifies workflow, reduces setup time, and removes many of the trade-offs typically seen in traditional surgical or drug-based clot treatment approaches.
How does Ichor Vascular ensure safety, simplicity, and efficiency in vascular procedures for healthcare providers?
Ichor Vascular ensures safety, simplicity, and efficiency in vascular procedures by combining regulatory rigor, real-world clinical data, and intentionally streamlined device design. All Ichor devices are 510(k) cleared, demonstrating that they meet established standards for safety and performance. Beyond regulatory clearance, the company actively collects real-world post-market data from procedures to better understand performance across different anatomical locations and clinical scenarios. These insights are used to continuously refine device design, improving efficacy, ease of use, and overall safety profiles for healthcare providers and patients.
The technology is built using well-understood, clinically trusted materials and is engineered for high-scale manufacturing. This approach helps reduce variability and reliability issues that can arise in complex systems involving multiple components, capital equipment, or software-dependent processes. By avoiding unnecessary complexity, Ichor focuses on creating tools that are intuitive for physicians to deploy and operate in high-pressure clinical environments.
Ultimately, Ichor Vascular prioritizes simple, highly effective solutions that integrate smoothly into existing clinical workflows, helping providers perform procedures more efficiently while maintaining strong safety and performance standards.
What are the biggest challenges currently facing the vascular intervention market, and how is Ichor addressing them?
One of the biggest challenges facing the vascular intervention market today is the relative lack of research and innovation in peripheral vascular occlusions compared to areas like stroke or coronary disease. Despite affecting a large and growing patient population, arterial and venous diseases in the lower limbs still rely on treatment approaches that have seen limited meaningful outcome improvement over several decades, while overall treatment costs continue to rise.
Ichor Vascular is addressing these challenges by developing solutions designed to overcome the limitations of existing therapies without introducing new trade-offs. The company’s technology aims to eliminate common complications linked to surgery and drug-based therapies, while also avoiding blood loss often associated with aspiration-based tools and vessel damage sometimes seen with mechanical dragging technologies. By incorporating flow arrest, the system helps reduce the risk of distal embolization during clot removal.
Additionally, Ichor simplifies lower extremity thrombectomy by removing the need for capital equipment and packaging all required components into a single, ready-to-use kit. This “open and go” approach supports physicians across varying experience levels, helping make advanced vascular treatment more accessible, efficient, and consistent.
What role does physician usability and adoption play in your product design philosophy?
Physician usability and adoption are central to Ichor Vascular’s product design philosophy, with simplicity and ease of use treated as primary drivers of clinical success. The company intentionally builds technology around the familiar Endo-Fogarty balloon mechanism of action, which many physicians already trust and understand from traditional surgical practice. By translating this proven approach into an endovascular format, Ichor helps reduce the learning curve and supports faster, more confident adoption across different care settings.
Ichor devices are designed to follow straightforward, standard interventional steps, allowing physicians, traveling technicians, or locum providers to use the system effectively even in urgent or resource-limited situations. The technology is engineered to perform consistently across a wide range of vessel anatomies and clot morphologies, helping ensure predictable outcomes without requiring complex setup or external technical support.
By prioritizing intuitive workflows, broad anatomical applicability, and meaningful cost reduction, Ichor aims to support long-term physician adoption while helping healthcare systems deliver effective vascular care more efficiently and consistently.
Looking ahead, what are Ichor Vascular’s key growth priorities and future innovation areas?
Looking ahead, Ichor Vascular’s growth priorities are centered on expanding clinical adoption, strengthening real-world evidence, and advancing next-generation thrombectomy innovation. The company is currently expanding the limited market release of its 7F arterial system across select hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers, allowing physicians to gain hands-on experience while generating meaningful real-world performance data. At the same time, Ichor continues collecting procedural and clinical data on both its 14F venous platform and the newer 7F arterial solution to further validate outcomes, optimize device performance, and guide future product refinements.
L to R: Tim Blair, CEO and Co-Founder | Troy Long MD, CMO and Co-Founder | Mike Bravo, CEO – Osiris Preclinical
Beyond these existing platforms, Ichor’s development pipeline includes a 7F / 8F solution specifically designed for dialysis grafts and fistulas. This represents a significant opportunity, as dialysis access management remains a large and often underserved clinical area compared to more widely studied conditions like stroke and pulmonary embolism.
Ichor is focused on expanding minimally invasive solutions that simplify clot removal procedures, improve clinical efficiency, and address major gaps in peripheral vascular care, helping broaden access to effective thrombectomy technologies across diverse patient populations.
“Easy to set up. Simple to use. Predictable outcomes. No clinical trade-offs”
Company Name : ICHOR Vascular Inc
Website : https://ichorvascular.com/
Management Team
Tim Blair | CEO and Co-Founder
Troy Long MD | CMO and Co-Founder
Mike Bravo | CEO – Osiris Preclinical
