Design of a module for bipolar vessel sealing

Abstract

According to recent survey [1], about 6 billion people live in Low-and-Middle Income Countries (LMICs) who do not have proper access to safe surgical care. There are several reasons behind this, such as lack of funding to the healthcare department, below par maintenance of the available devices, poor infrastructure and most importantly high cost of the surgical equipment necessary in an operating room. A bipolar vessel sealing system is one of the many devices which is required for laparoscopic surgery and new innovations in the vessel sealing technologies have transformed the ways of electrosurgery as these devices perform surgery in a safe, reliable and efficient way with minimum operating time and reduced blood loss. Unfortunately, these units have been extensively designed and developed for High Income Countries but not so much for LMICs. The department of Medical Instruments & Bio Inspired Technology at TU Delft is currently working on a solution to produce a vessel sealing system which is safe and reliable to be used in LMICs. Electrosurgery is a type of surgery where high frequency alternating current is used to obtain a desired tissue effect like cut, coagulate, desiccate and fulgurate by converting electrical energy into thermal energy. An Electrosurgical unit is a generator which provides energy for many such surgical procedures and is available in every hospital. The aim of this project is to provide an additional module which can be attached to the ESU and generate energy of a bipolar vessel sealing system. The module will have a simple circuit design for easy maintenance and will be made of easily available, replaceable and inexpensive components. This will provide a possible solution to use bipolar vessel sealing in low cost setting. The list of requirements for the circuit of this module is collected from technical details in user manuals and experimental studies for both conventional ESUs and bipolar vessel sealing systems. It also determined the input and output characteristics of the module. The circuit design of the module is based on the block diagram of a common ESU and similar components have been used to establish a connection. The circuit was designed and simulated in a software and the outcomes were matched to the output of a bipolar vessel sealing system already in use (LigaSure vessel sealing system).Further investigation and research are required to make this module functional for clinical applications as the module does not perform all the functions of a bipolar vessel sealing system, but it does fulfil the basic purpose for which such a system is used in electrosurgery.