Abstract
During many surgical procedures such as gastrointestinal or vascular surgery it is necessary to excise and reconnect bodily conduits. Failed connections can have extremely serious consequences and a method to help surgeons determine the integrity of connections has been proposed. This involves the detection of trace gas breaching an anastomosis. A key feature of this is establishing a method to place a controlled volume of gas into the conduit. A soluble capsule method is presented here. The requirements were that the capsule must be safe, a volume of 0.5 - 1.0ml of gas at 2 Bar pressure should be contained, that the filling gas can be varied to suit the clinical application and that the capsules have a shelf life of at least 5 days without showing loss of gas. A device and procedure were developed to meet these criteria. This consists of modified oral pharmaceutical capsules and a capsule filling mechanism contained in a vacuum chamber. Sealing the capsules has been achieved via an alcohol / water mix coupled to capilliary action. Results show performance which meets the design specification and the capsules have shown themselves effective in tests using phantom scenarios.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | IFMBE Proceedings 4th European Conference of the International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering |
| Pages | 895-898 |
| Number of pages | 4 |
| Volume | 22 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Jan 2008 |