Sensing tissue trauma in surgery

Start date: 17 December 2013
End date: 15 June 2015
Funder: EPSRC
Primary investigator: Professor Peter Culmer
Co-investigators: Dr Greg Taylor, Dr James Chandler,
Postgraduate students: Jen Barrie, Dom Jones

We are working to characterise and optimise the performance of surgical graspers used routinely in MIS.

Research has shown that these instruments can induce damage as they are used to manipulate and retract delicate soft tissues.

Our research is exploring this situation in several ways; firstly understanding how graspers are used by surgeons (quantifying the forces they apply), characterising the tissue response during simulated grasping and combining this with clinical histological measures (to assess resultant tissue damage) and finally exploring how graspers can be optimised to improve this situation.

Supported by EPSRC (EP/L022273/1)