Contactless Heat Measurement System for Retinal Coagulation: Design and Evaluation

Introduction: Current heat measurement systems for retinal coagulation are insufficient to demonstrate the safety of intraocular diathermy instruments. Therefore, this paper aims to design and test a novel coagulation heat measurement system that attempts to infer direct retinal tissue temperature using contactless thermal measurements. Methods:...

A Context-specific Design of an Electrosurgical Unit and Monopolar Handheld to Enhance Global Access to Surgical Care: a Design Approach Based On Contextual Factors

To comply with the large global need for surgery, surgical equipment that fits the challenging environment in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs) should be designed. The aim of this study is to present a context-specific design of an electrosurgical unit (ESU) and a monopolar handheld to improve global access to surgery. This paper...

The Equipment Journey as a tool to design safe surgical equipment for low-and middle income countries: Electrosurgery used as an example

In low- and middle income countries there is a need for safe and affordable high quality surgical equipment. Nowadays, electrosurgical units are part of the standard equipment in operation theatres worldwide, since electrosurgery comes with many advantages such as reduced blood loss. However, the technology of electrosurgery also carries several...

The Integration of Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy into the Electrosurgical Knife: Clarifying and Preventing Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy Signal Deterioration during Use of the Smart Electrosurgical Knife

During use of the smart electrosurgical knife, deterioration of the diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) signal intensity obstructs proper distinction between tissues. In order to reduce signal loss, this research has focused on the influence of smart electrosurgery on both the morphology and composition of the layer covering the optical fiber...

Designing a test set-up to measure electrosurgical parameters: In Search of Design Requirements for an Electrosurgical Unit for Low-and-Middle Income Countries

Safe surgical and anesthetic care is not available to 5 billion people worldwide. Many problems that are encountered when providing surgical care are related to surgical equipment. A lot of surgical equipment is designed for the use in High-Income Countries (HICs) and not specifically for Low-and-Middle Income countries (LMICs). One appliance,...

Empowering the accessibility of safe global electrosurgery: Safe electrosurgery should be available for everyone, everywhere

Msc. Roos Oosting and the Global Health Design Lab initiated development of affordable and high-quality electrical surgery units (ESU) as a step towards improving surgical care. The ESU is used as an operating tool to assist the surgeon for a high variety of essential surgical procedures. The ESU consists of a high frequency generator with an...

The integration of diffuse reflectance spectroscopy into the electrosurgical knife used during breast-conserving surgery: Determining and overcoming the challenge of tissue debris adhering to the ‘smart’ electrosurgical knife

Among women, breast cancer has the highest incidence rate of all types of cancer worldwide. For 80% of these patients, a treatment option is the surgical procedure known as breast conserving surgery (BCS). Re-excision is required in 10-60% of these patients, as positive margins are encountered post-operatively, showing the need of an intra...

Critical Design Requirements for an Electrosurgical Unit used in Low-Middle Income Countries

Introduction: Over five billion people in mainly low and middle income countries (LMICs) do not have access to safe surgery. This is due to a lack of available and functional medical equipment, where up to 70% of the existing equipment is broken. Some reasons for this shortage in medical equipment are a lack of funding, maintenance, training,...

Design of a novel three- dimensional-printed two degrees-of-freedom steerable electrosurgical grasper for minimally invasive surgery

In current bipolar electrosurgical instruments, a high frequency electrical sinusoidal wave is passed through the patient's body from an active electrode to the return electrode to cut, coagulate, or desiccate tissues. Even though current bipolar electrosurgical instruments have proven effective in minimizing blood loss, advancement is needed...

Electrosurgery: short-circuit between education and practice

Introduction: Electrosurgery is used in 80% of surgical procedures. The technique allows surgeons to skilfully dissect tissues and achieve haemostasis. Since improper use of electrosurgery can lead to serious adverse events, training is required to potentially reduce the number and severity of these events. In this study we evaluate education...

The art of electrosurgery: Trainees and experts

The benefits of electrosurgery have been acknowledged since the early 1920s, and nowadays more than 80% of surgical procedures involve devices that apply energy to tissues. Despite its widespread use, it is currently unknown how the operator's choices with regard to instrument selection and application technique are related to complications....

Design of a 3D printed steerable bipolar electrosurgical tool

Current electrosurgical instruments often lack the capability to be optimally customized to a certain procedure/patient. It simply wouldn’t be feasible to produce ten or hundred different configurations in terms of dimensions and geometry of the same device. Most instruments come in one configuration. This study aims to increase the flexibility...

Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy for Intraoperative Tumor Margin Assessment: Workflow Analysis and Effect of Coagulation on Tissue Sensing

The aim of this graduation project is to assess the feasibility of the photonic technology called diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) to aid in intraoperative margin assessment with the goal of obtaining clear margins for liver, breast and soft tissue tumors. The idea is to integrate optical fibers in the existing and widely used...