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...)
Tag: Vascular Surgery
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...)
Personalized Blood Flow Modeling Benefits from Virtual Reality Interface
Researchers at Duke University have developed a fluid dynamics simulator that can model blood flow within the body, including the motion of individual blood cells. The researchers hope that the system could eventually be used by clinicians to model blood flow for individual patients and help with treatment decisions, such as stent placement. By tes (Read more...)
Electric Stimulation Gives Robot-Assistive Surgery a Sense of Touch
A team of researchers at Texas A&M have performed studies evaluating how electrical stimulation can help users control robots, for example helping surgeons steady their movements during robot-assisted procedures. They found, in 11 subjects, that small electrical stimulations to the fingertips can help users control the pinching of a hardwood bl (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...)
Camera Images Blood Perfusion at High Resolution Thanks to Pulse Oximeter
How blood moves throughout the body and into the smallest capillaries is hard to observe using existing imaging methods. Yet, poor blood perfusion can be an indicator for a variety of medical conditions, potentially serving as a diagnostic tool and a way to help manage diseases. Infrared thermography is a decent tool for this, but […]
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. […]
Fist Assist Helps Prep Vein for Dialysis Surgery, Lead to Healthy Fistula
Fist Assist Devices, a small Silicon Valley firm, won the European CE Mark for its eponymous wearable device. The Fist Assist works to widen the vein diameter in preparation for fistula placement and to help with fistula vein dilation in patients requiring hemodialysis. It is worn on the arm twice a day starting at about […]
(Read more...)Surfacer FDA Cleared for Unusual Dialysis Central Venous Access
The right internal jugular vein is typically the ideal access point for performing hemodialysis via a central venous catheter. Yet, in close to half of patients there’s an obstruction that makes this either a serious challenge or an impossibility. Now, a device called the Surfacer Inside-Out Access Catheter System has been cleared via the FDA (Read more...)
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...)
Textiles from Human Cells for Replacement Vessels, Tissues, Organs
Scientists at University of Bordeaux/French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm) have developed a completely new biological material, made using human fibroblast cells, that can be turned into sutures, vascular grafts, and many other medical devices and tissue replacements. They showed that their Cell-Assembled extracellular M (Read more...)