KIC Ventures, inventor of the global movement in LESS Exposure Spine Surgery (LESS™) and a leader in interventional spine surgery innovation, announced the release of VertiFix, a breakthrough technology designed to address a critical and growing challenge facing interventional pain management (IPM) physicians: the safe removal of failed or improperly placed interspinous process implants while preserving the spinous processes.
Following widespread implantation of various interspinous process devices, such as Boston Scientific Vertiflex Superion device, the industry is now seeing an increasing number of revision cases attributed to poor placement, suboptimal patient selection, or disease progression—factors that ultimately contributed to the device's recall. While Vertiflex offered value for patients with mild spinal stenosis, physicians are now confronting a harsh reality: removal is often extremely difficult—and sometimes nearly impossible—without causing significant anatomical damage.
Dr. Kingsley R. Chin, orthopaedic spine surgeon, CEO and Founder of KIC Ventures, personally observed the magnitude of this issue during a case in Long Island.
"I watched an IPM physician struggle for more than two hours to remove a Vertiflex implant so he could revise with InSpan—if he could preserve the spinous processes. The case was eventually aborted because the device could not be removed. The patient ultimately required a full laminectomy by a spine surgeon, and both spinous processes had to be sacrificed. That moment made it clear: the industry needed a solution—and quickly." — Dr. Kingsley R. Chin
This scenario is becoming increasingly common nationwide. IPM physicians are struggling to revise interspinous fixation devices without damaging anatomy or escalating patients to major surgery, highlighting the need for better education and supportive clinical systems.
In response, KIC Ventures began educating physicians to use the InSpan® instrumentation system to carefully dissect around interspinous implants and remove them with minimal disruption. These early successful revisions sparked a deeper engineering effort to create a definitive long-term solution.
That solution is VertiFix — a patented system developed in collaboration between spine surgeons and leading IPM physicians, including Dr. Luis Fandos (NY) and Dr. Jonathan Daitch (FL), who personally faced these revision challenges and urged the team to engineer a solution, and Vito Lore, CTO of KIC Ventures. The system underwent extensive clinical insight development, engineering refinement, and cadaveric validation.
