University Park, Pa. (College of Engineering News Release) – A team of Penn State engineers and doctors have received a $386,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to continue development of ultra-small surgical instruments that would allow doctors to use fewer incisions during medical procedures.

The two-year grant, titled “Nanoparticulate Enabled Surgical Instruments,” is headed by Mary Frecker, professor of mechanical engineering.

Frecker has been working for a number of years on developing small, multifunctional surgical instruments, which she likens to a Swiss Army knife. The idea behind the tools is to minimize the amount of time surgeons spend exchanging instruments during minimally invasive procedures such as laparoscopy.

In a new type of endoscopic procedure called natural orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery (NOTES), a surgeon may access the abdomen through the mouth and esophagus to conduct a gastrointestinal procedure. This type of work is sometimes called ‘incision-less surgery,’ as it does not involve making any cuts in the skin.

“Surgeons have to insert instruments through the working channel of a flexible endoscope that is about a meter long,” Frecker states. “When the surgeon needs to switch tool tips, he or she has to snake it all the way out of the working channel.”

Her previous work, which is patented, yielded instruments that were a mere 5 mm in diameter. Frecker’s team is now creating even smaller tools on the order of 1 mm or smaller in diameter.

“What we’d like to be able to do with surgical instruments is make them very small and make them very versatile,” she explains. “We’re really at the limit with what we can do with conventional materials and conventional manufacturing techniques.”

The NIH grant allows Frecker’s team to examine advanced manufacturing techniques for these ultra-small surgical instruments.

Frecker is working with Jim Adair, professor of materials science and engineering, whose research group is pioneering a new manufacturing process involving nanoparticulate materials.

“The focus in this project is how to fabricate new instruments using this new manufacturing process,” she says.

Frecker continues, “The process starts with fabricating molds using photolithography. The molds are then filled with a nanoparticulate material. The material we’ve been focusing on is called zirconia, which has nanometer-sized grains. The idea with using this material with the very, very small grains is that we can make parts with really small feature sizes and sharp edges.”

Once filled with the nanoparticulate material, the molds are then burned away during sintering, leaving a free-standing part.

“We can make thousands of these things in a batch very cheaply,” she says.

Frecker’s team has also been working closely with physicians at the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center to refine the instruments. Doctors have been testing the ultra-small instruments in surgical simulators and giving feedback to Frecker’s team for design refinements.

“One area we think these instruments will be useful in the future is NOTES,” Frecker says, adding that the ultra-small instruments might even allow for procedures that can’t be done with existing technology.

Working with Frecker on the grant are Adair; Christopher Muhlstein, assistant professor of materials science and engineering; Alan Snyder, professor of bioengineering; Eric Mockensturm, associate professor of mechanical engineering; Randy Haluck, surgeon at Hershey Medical Center; and Abraham Mathew, gastroenterologist at Hershey Medical Center.

The project is supported by grant number R21EB006488 from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering. The content of this article is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering or the NIH.

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Editors: Dr. Frecker can be reached at mxf36@psu.edu or at 814-865-1617.

Contact: Curtis Chan Phone: 814-865-5544 E-mail: news@engr.psu.edu