React Health has entered into a distribution agreement with SleepRes LLC to provide SleepRes’ recently launched V-Com CPAP accessory with new React Health positive airway pressure orders in the United States. The V-Com, placed between the CPAP mask and the CPAP hose, reduces inspiratory pressure and flow to provide comfort with minimal to no reduction in expiratory pressure.
“React Health is committed to providing innovative options to improve comfort and patient tolerance to PAP therapy. The V-Com is a novel approach that is focused on solving the adherence issues that the industry has struggled with due to patients not being able to tolerate their PAP,” says Clint Geffert, president, commercial operations, for React Health, in a press release. “As a manufacturer, we are in a unique position to complement the efforts that our DME and physician partners utilize daily to improve patient compliance. Our relationship with V-Com is an example of this. We know when patients are more comfortable, they are more likely to continue therapy.”
Robert Miller, vice president of sleep therapy at Apria Healthcare, says in a release, “I have experienced the V-Com myself and believe it is a real difference maker for patients starting CPAP. The fact that a manufacturer has chosen to make V-Com available for their patients is tremendous value-add. I congratulate React Health.”
Long-time physicians and engineers in sleep medicine suggest that current CPAP devices are harder to tolerate than 20 years ago. They attribute this difficulty acclimating to therapy in part to inspiratory pressure, which the V-Com improves.
“The V-Com’ s comfort comes from the [inspiratory pressure] being less than [expiratory pressure],” says Krishna Sundar, MD, chief of medicine at the University of Utah, in a press release. “This new concept of IPAP less than EPAP appears to have advantages beyond comfort. It is causing all of us in the field to rethink treatment.”
“Comfort is an ethical matter,” says William Noah, MD, CEO of SleepRes, in a release. “If an intervention provides comfort for a difficult therapy, and does not adversely affect the therapy, then I believe you have an obligation to offer that intervention. We applaud the leadership of React Health for being so patient-focused and look forward to working with them.”
React Health’s Geffert adds, “One of the best solutions we’ve seen is to change the pressure transitions in the devices, and in our partnership with V-Com we look forward to making that happen.”
