Technologies

Small, fluorescent surgical disposables (i.e. needles, sutures, and trocars) have been invented by UT Health SA that fluoresce to aid in visualization of the item. This functionality can be used in the event that the items are lost or unaccounted for during or after a surgical procedure.

Background:

Losing an instrument during surgery is a rare but potentially serious event that can cause prolonged operative time and patient harm. It is common practice for surgical teams to perform equipment counts before and after a procedure to account for all items. Equipment can be dropped, misplaced in the surgical theater, or left retained within a patient. Solutions exist to reduce this risk, such as routine surgical counts, visual searches, use of magnetic retrievers, barcodes, RFID’s, and radiography. However, none of these solutions offer a fast and simple way to find the misplaced item or prevent loss of the item in the first place. Additionally, these solutions may not be applicable to those surgical fields that use extremely small tools (e.g. ophthalmology, neurology). The sutures in these applications can be as small as a human hair.