Smart Seams
Monitoring of surgical wounds is an important measure to prevent infection, suture divergence and other complications. But after surgery on internal organs, it is usually limited to clinical observation or X-ray examinations, which often do not allow to identify complications before they become threatening. Rigid bioelectric sensors can be implanted into the body for continuous monitoring, but they tend to have a bad effect on sensitive wound tissue.
To identify early postoperative complications, a group of researchers led by John Ho from the National University of Singapore invented an intelligent suture material. The development is a small electronic sensor that is able to assess the condition of the wound edges, detect the failure of gastrointestinal anastomoses and tissue divergence, while providing healing results equivalent to standard medical sutures.
How do smart seams work?
The invention consists of three key components: a silk suture material coated with a conductive polymer that allows it to respond to wireless signals and perform the function of an antenna, an electronic sensor without a battery and a receiver located outside the body.
One of the advantages of intelligent suture material is that its use involves minimal modification of standard surgical procedures. During the stitching of the wound, a polymer-coated fragment of silk threads is threaded through an electronic module and secured by applying medical silicone to electrical contacts.
Then the entire surgical suture functions as a tag for radio frequency identification (RFID) and can interact with an external receiver that sends a signal to the suture module and reads the reflected signal: a change in its frequency indicates a possible complication in the postoperative wound.
Intelligent seams can be located at a depth of up to 50 mm, and it will subsequently be further increased by the authors by increasing the conductivity of the seam or the sensitivity of the external receiver.
Like conventional suture material, smart sutures can be removed after surgery using a minimally invasive surgical or endoscopic procedure when the risk of complications has passed.
Early detection of postoperative complications
To identify various types of complications, such as suture failure or infection, the research team coated the sensor with various types of polymer gel. If the seam is torn, the external reader picks up a weakened signal due to a decrease in the length of the antenna formed by the silk thread, warning the attending physician about the need to take action.
Efficiency and safety
During the experiments, the group showed on live pigs that smart sutures can control the integrity of the wound, the consistency of gastrointestinal anastomoses and the displacement of the wound edges. In mice, the healing results of wounds sutured with intelligent suture material and conventional surgical silk healed naturally without significant differences. The researchers also demonstrated that the radio signal power levels required for the system to work are safe for the human body.
Further development
In the future, the group plans to develop a portable wireless receiver that will replace the installation currently used to read the signals of intelligent sutures, which will allow monitoring healing even outside medical institutions. This will allow patients to be discharged from hospitals after surgery earlier.
Currently, researchers are working with surgeons and manufacturers of medical devices to adapt the novelty for the early detection of bleeding from wounds and the failure of anastomoses after operations on the gastrointestinal tract. They also seek to increase the working depth of the seams, which will allow deeper organs and tissues to be controlled.
Article V.Kalidasan et al. Wirelessly operated bioelectronic sutures for the monitoring of deep surgical wounds is published in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering.
Aminat Adzhieva, portal "Eternal Youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru based on the materials of the National University of Singapore: Smart sutures to monitor deep surgical wounds.