Endobronchial valve

[1] The amount of residual volume reduction achieved, correlates with the effects on FEV1, quality of life and exercise capacity.

[3] Endobronchial valves may be the first successful medical device treatment of emphysema, a disease that affects millions of people worldwide and has no known cure, being managed traditionally by lung transplantation and/or lung volume reduction surgery (though some people do not meet the eligibility requirements for one or both of these invasive procedures).

[4][5] Although endobronchial isolation techniques for emphysema were developed in the early 2000s,[6] specific valves were developed primarily by the start-up medical device company Emphasys Medical (now Pulmonx - Redwood City, California) as a minimally invasive alternative to lung volume reduction surgery for emphysema.

Endobronchial valves were designed to replicate the effects of that procedure without requiring incisions, by simply allowing the most diseased portions of the lung to collapse.

[2] Another company, Spiration (Seattle, Washington), developed a different type of endobronchial valve and was acquired by Olympus in 2010.