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O U T P AT I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E | O C T O B E R 2 0 1 4
PRODUCT
News
Great ideas for your OR
F
our bioengineering students from UC Berkeley might have solved
the annoying problem every laparoscopic surgeon faces: lenses
that become clouded or dirty during surgery and have to be with-
drawn, cleaned and repositioned — a process that takes several min-
utes and may need to be repeated numerous times during a procedure.
The common causes of obstructed views during laparoscopy include
abdominal bleeding, lens condensation and tissue smearing. The stu-
dents have developed a self-cleaning laparoscope inspired by, of all
things, a ballpoint pen.
"My partners and I spent hours trying to come up with ideas for possible
solutions," says Neil Ray, one of the students and now an MD candidate at
Duke. "After one session, Sakthi (Nagaraj) looked at the ballpoint pen he
was jotting thoughts down with and began to think about the mechanism
UNINTERRUPTED VISUALIZATION
A Smudge-Free, Self-Cleaning Laparoscope
BREAKTHROUGH DESIGN? Bioengineering students used off-the-shelf
parts to build an oversized prototype of a self-cleaning laparoscope.
Neil
Ray
