Tag: Vascular Surgery

Soft Electronics for Advanced Heart Catheters

Researchers at George Washington University and Northwestern University have developed a new class of soft devices that can provide new functionality for catheters used in cardiac procedures. The new materials are soft electronics, including stretchable sensors and actuators, that when applied to the surface of a catheter system, could greatly assi (Read more...)

Origami Surgical Manipulator to Perform Microsurgeries

Robotic surgical assistants, such as the da Vinci systems from Intuitive Surgical, are now routinely used during laparoscopic procedures to improve operative precision, flexibility, and to manipulate multiple tools at once. Such devices can be quite complex inside and so they tend to be quite large, often taking up much of the space of an [… (Read more...)

Endologix Alto Abdominal Stent Graft for AAA Cleared in Europe

Endologix, based in Irvine, California, won clearance in the European Union for its ALTO Abdominal Stent Graft System. The implant is intended to open up endovascular aortic repair to a wider range of abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) patients, particularly those with short and challenging aortic necks. Ideally, the aortic neck where the stent graft (Read more...)

TIGERTRIEVER XL Cleared in EU to Remove Large Stroke Clots

Israel’s Rapid Medical has won European regulatory clearance to introduce its TIGERTRIEVER XL device for removing large ischemic stroke-causing clots from intracranial vessels. The company calls its line of devices “stentrievers,” as these look and operate similar to stents but can retrieve clots out of the body. The TIGERTRIEVER (Read more...)

A Laparoscopy Assistance Platform to Optimize Minimally Invasive Surgery: Interview with Anne Osdoit, CEO of MastOR

Minimally invasive surgery has played a huge role in improving patient outcomes, and reducing morbidity and recovery times compared with traditional surgical techniques. However, it can be a little tricky for surgeons to operate through tiny incisions and use complicated equipment, meaning that there is often a significant learning curve and traini (Read more...)

Blood Vessel Networks Made by 3D Printing Powdered Sugar

To study the complex functionality of groups of cells, and to one day build replacement tissues, researchers have been trying to find a way to generate artificial vascular networks capable of supplying oxygen and nutrients to thousands of cells. Extrusion 3D printing, in which a liquefied material is layered down and allowed to harden, has [&hellip (Read more...)

Nanostimulators Activate Damaged Tissue to Heal Itself

Peripheral artery diseases and injuries to tissue reduce the amount of oxygen that reaches the affected muscles. Such ischemia is difficult to treat, as new vessels are required to carry more oxygen into damaged tissues. Stem cells derived from fat tissues have been shown to excrete substances that spur angiogenesis and calm nearby inflammation. Bu (Read more...)

Easily Removable Surgical Tape to Seal Internal Wounds

Researchers at MIT recently developed an adhesive tape that allows surgeons to seal internal wounds and that can readily stick to slippery internal surfaces, as a potential replacement for sutures. However, the adhesive worked a little too well, and was difficult to remove or adjust without causing irritation or tissue damage. Now, the research tea (Read more...)

Magnetic Tracking System for Flexible Surgical Robots

Researchers at the University of California San Diego have developed a magnetic tracking system for surgical robots to operate with dexterity within the body. The technology does not require patient or clinician exposure to radiation, and is much less expensive that pre-existing monitoring techniques. A magnet is embedded in the tip of the robot an (Read more...)

Xenoscope Disposable 5mm Laparoscope FDA Cleared

Xenocor, a Salt Lake City company, won FDA clearance for its Xenoscope 5mm articulating disposable laparoscope. The device requires no sterilization re-processing between procedures and is thrown away after it’s used, avoiding the necessity for servicing contracts. The entire system being quite compact, it doesn’t need its own large ima (Read more...)

Universal Biomedical 3D Printing Ink Developed

3D printing is already used in medicine in many applications, but there’s still a great deal that custom-built implants could offer to patients. Bioinks, the materials from which bespoke implants can printed, may be the most important focus of research aimed at expanding the use of additive manufacturing, another term for 3D printing, in medi (Read more...)

nView Medical’s Fast 3D Intraoperative Imaging with Less Radiation: Interview with CEO Cristian Atria

Fluoroscopy is used in surgical procedures to visualize structures and tools in real-time, allowing surgeons to monitor the movement of a device, instrument, or body part. However, fluoroscopy is a 2D technology that can lead to surgical inaccuracies. Alternative 3D imaging systems provide higher accuracy, but they sometimes require pausing the sur (Read more...)

Artificial Self-Assembled Blood Vessels

A team of researchers headed by groups at University of Nottingham and Queen Mary University London have come up with a smart material that forms into new blood vessels. Made out of graphene oxide and a protein, the material is 3D printed and naturally forms into tubular shapes that are very similar to blood vessels. […]

Microsure MUSA Robot Used for First Time on Real Patients

In a world first, clinicians at Maastricht University have used a robot to perform “supermicrosurgeries”, which involved operating on vessels as small as 0.3 mm in diameter. The procedures were conducted on women with lymphedema, a condition that arose as a result of breast cancer, whose lymphatic vessels were connected to veins to prov (Read more...)