For patients with end-stage kidney disease who need long-term hemodialysis, the vessels are a “lifeline.” To make sure dialysis runs smoothly, physicians usually connect the patient’s artery and vein surgically to create a native arteriovenous fistula (AVF). However, conventional fistula surgery has a worrying problem: about a quarter of fistulas “fail to grow” or close early after surgery (medically called “failure to mature”).
Medical device: the VasQ external support device effectively addresses the problem of dialysis access that fails to mature. According to the latest results from Singapore, published in May 2026 in the Journal of Vascular Access, VasQ has been established as an important supporting tool for dialysis patients. The patients in the study are closer to the actual dialysis population in Taiwan and other parts of Asia, which makes it worth studying closely and learning from.
What is VasQ, and how does it work?
Put simply, VasQ can be seen as a “supportive protective device” at the junction of the vessels.
When a surgeon diverts high-pressure arterial blood into a vein, the vein often cannot cope with the sudden impact of such high flow, and problems follow: the vessel wall becomes inflamed and thickened and may eventually narrow, so that the vessel “fails to grow” or closes early; medically this is called “failure to mature.” VasQ is a small external support placed around the vessel, and its main functions are:
- Fixing the angle accurately: ensuring that the connection between the artery and the vein follows a suitable hemodynamic angle.
- Sharing the flow pressure: reducing the direct impact of blood flow on the vein wall, so that the vessel dilates steadily and smoothly.
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The latest Singapore study: strong performance in Asian patients
In the past, VasQ’s successful cases were concentrated in patients in Europe and North America. This new Asian study, published in a well-known medical journal, followed 118 local dialysis patients in Singapore and showed that the device performs just as well in Asian patients, whose vessels are generally smaller.
- Maturation rate as high as 95.8%: within six months of surgery, the great majority of patients’ vessels grew successfully and reached the standard needed for dialysis.
- Far fewer repeat interventions: after conventional surgery, many patients whose vessels did not grow had to return to the catheterization lab repeatedly to have the vessel “opened” (balloon angioplasty). With VasQ, the proportion needing this extra help fell sharply from 46% with the conventional approach to 26.9%.
- Longer vessel life: at 18 months of follow-up, patency of conventional fistulas at about one year is typically only around 33%, whereas in patients with VasQ the vessels as a whole remained highly patent and usable after a year and a half (secondary patency as high as 86.2%).
- Safety: throughout follow-up, no infections or complications were caused by the device.
PubMed Link: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41039890/
What the Singapore experts say
The Singapore team said that VasQ makes the vessel’s performance after surgery “highly predictable.” In other words, physicians have markedly more confidence that the vessel can be put into use smoothly. Even if the vessel develops mild narrowing in the future, the problem is relatively mild and localized, and so easy to treat.
Because the effect is so marked, the vascular surgeons at that hospital have for two consecutive years made VasQ part of their “standard care pathway” for dialysis fistula surgery. For patients about to start dialysis and need an access, this new technology offers an option that provides more assurance and peace of mind.
VasQ entered the Taiwan market in 2026, with the hope of improving the creation and care of dialysis access in Taiwan. This marks an important step in VasQ’s global expansion strategy, bringing new technology to Taiwan’s healthcare system, helping to improve patients’ treatment outcomes and quality of life, and bringing notable progress and a higher standard of care to dialysis access.
