WombOx - Minimally Invasive Monitoring of Fetal Blood Oxygen
Fetal surgery is a new, quickly growing, and minimally invasive method for treating a variety of congenital conditions within the womb. However, fetal surgery also carries a risk of decreased oxygenation of the fetus. This decrease in blood oxygen can be due to the congenital disease itself or could be caused by potential intraoperative complications. Currently no device exists to monitor fetal blood oxygenation while the fetus is still in the womb. Rice University's Team WombOx has designed a system to accurately monitor fetal blood oxygen during surgery that can be quickly and safely delivered and retrieved through a minimally invasive trocar. The ability to monitor intraoperative fetal blood oxygen will improve surgical outcomes. The WombOx device has the potential to become the new standard of care in fetal surgery.
Transcript
00:00:02 you hi I'm Claudia riano I'm Thomas Laughlin I'm Samaras AED and I'm captain Wallace and we're eating bugs we're for bio engineers at Rice University who have worked with Texas Children's Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine to develop a blood oxygen monitor for use during minimally invasive fetal surgery minimally invasive fetal surgery also
00:00:30 known as fetus copic surgery is used to treat birth defects while fetus is still in the womb during a typical procedure a small incision is made in the maternal abdomen and a four millimeter port like this one called a trocar is inserted into the womb then surgical instruments are passed through this trocar to operate on the fetus these surgeries can greatly improve the outcome of a birth
00:00:51 defect but carry a risk of fetal hypoxia or a low fetal blood oxygen which can lead to brain damage organ damage or even death in the developed world blood oxygen monitors like these full finger clip pulse oximeters are used to alert surgeons of hypoxia as you can see they're too big to pass through this trocar therefore there is currently no way to measure fetal blood oxygen during
00:01:13 fetus copic surgeries leaving the fetuses vulnerable to hypoxia to change this our team adapted a pulse oximeter for you strength fetus copic surgery making it safe easy to use and small enough to fit through a trocar in order for our device to be successful we identified the following design criteria first safety safety of our device is essential we want to improve surgical
00:01:41 outcomes so the device should not increase surgical risks second sighs our device needs to pass through four millimeter trocar and still allow room in the trocar for surgical instruments third ease of use the device needs to be easy enough to use that it takes very little time to insert and remove this will minimize the time patients are under anesthesia fourth accuracy in
00:02:08 order to properly monitor hypoxic events and allow surgeons to intervene in time our device needs to continuously and accurately report the fetuses blood oxygen levels finally cost the device needs to be cost effective to reduce additional surgical costs with these criteria in mind we develop the womb ox the womb box features a collapsible design that
00:02:32 expands in the womb and loops around the fetal ankle to measure blood oxygen level here's the remarks in action the womb box is packaged into a sheath that makes it easy to pass through the trocar on the mother's abdomen represented here by the kickball upon entering the wombs warm environment the wound box is unsheath and expands into a loop the wound box expands because it is
00:03:08 made of nitinol a type of shape memory metal that is activated at body temperature here's an example of nitinol reacting to heat after the nitinol expands the surgeon can loop the wound box around the fetus's ankle and tighten it by pushing on a collar with an applicator the device can now monitor the fetuses blood oxygen after the surgery the surgeon can
00:03:47 use forceps to loosen the collar and pull the wound box out of the womb the walmarts meets all of our design criteria our device does not increase surgical risks it's low profile design allows it to fast through the trocar and it is easily inserted and removed in the womb in under four minutes it is just as good as identifying hypoxic events as an adult finger click pulse oximeter and we
00:04:09 estimate at large manufacturing quantities the device would cost around 120 dollars our design has been admitted to to external conferences and won the willy revolution award for most innovative device additionally we have filed a provisional patent on our device with advanced manufacturing capabilities we hope that the womb box will become smaller and even safer we expect our
00:04:29 device will allow fetus copic surgeons to quickly and easily monitor blood oxygen levels during surgery you