Kona Medical's Surround Sound device.
Kona Medical’s Surround Sound device.

Bellevue-based Kona Medical has raised another $10 million in funding as its continues to test a device that treats high blood pressure in patients where medication doesn’t do the trick, according to a Tuesday SEC filing.

The company is looking to raise a total of $22.4 million before the latest financing round is closed, SEC records show. With this investment, the company has now raised over $50 million since it was founded in 2010.

konamedical1Kona’s breakthrough comes for patients who have overactive nerves around their kidneys, which leads to high blood pressure, or hypertension. For those patients, changing habits or taking medication isn’t going to solve the problem.

Other treatments have found success by going in and disrupting the nerves from the inside, but Kona’s “Surround Sound” device aims to do the same thing without surgery.

Patients lay on the device, which looks like an exam table, as it finds the nerves and knocks them offline with bursts of ultrasound energy.

Around 200 patients have received the treatment across four clinical trials. Early results showed improvements in 75 percent of patients after six months, according to a Kona news release announcing the latest trial.

BBC recently caught up with one of the doctors participating in a in trial England. The doctor said patients were able to go home within a couple hours of the procedure without any kind of pain.

There are millions of people worldwide with uncontrollable high blood pressure. Kona’s technology device certainly looks promising, but it’s also early on and will need quite a bit more time — and money — to get it over the finish line.

We have reached out to Kona representatives for more information on the funding round and will update this post when we hear back.

Like what you're reading? Subscribe to GeekWire's free newsletters to catch every headline

Job Listings on GeekWork

Find more jobs on GeekWork. Employers, post a job here.