Dr. Kevin Tracey

30,000, wow.

30,000 people tried to enroll in this trial for 250 spots that ended up with 242 patients in the final readout.

And the reason is,

and this is often overlooked when people talk about these kinds of things, the drugs are invasive.

The device, I'm pulling out here.

Surgery involves about an inch and a half incision in the left neck at about the level of the Adam's apple, the larynx, to implant a device that's about the size of a multivitamin.

or a fish oil pill.

The device sits directly on the vagus nerve at about the level of the carotid pulse.

You can feel your pulse.

And it is self-contained with those two shiny things are the leads that sit on the vagus nerve.

There is a computer disk, of course.

There's an antenna to talk to the doctor's tablet.

I always drop it when I'm at the podium, and that's very complicated on stage, Eric.

It also has, which is really clever, it sits on the vagus nerve, but it's wrapped in this silastic, like a peapod.

And so the nerve runs underneath it, and then there's a stitch that goes through the top to hold the whole thing in place.

How long did that surgery take to put it in?

An experienced neurosurgeon will put it in in under an hour, anywhere between a half hour and an hour.

It's an in-and-out surgery, outpatient, come in in the morning, go home in the afternoon.

We've been doing them in the hospital, but obviously this will be amenable in the future to a full outpatient standalone facility.

Right now, neurosurgeons are being trained by the company