TOOL, TRAINING SIMULATOR FOR SURGICAL PROCEDURE DEVELOPED
Modeling and simulation researchers at Old Dominion have teamed up with surgeons from Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters (CHKD) to continue a legacy of innovation that has made Norfolk the top location in the world for the treatment of a common chest deformity in children, pectus excavatum. Latin for "hollowed chest," the deformity causes several ribs and the sternum to grow abnormally. This produces a caved-in or sunken appearance of the chest, which can be present at birth or not develop until puberty.
Surgical correction of pectus excavatum was a complex and somewhat brutal procedure until CHKD surgeon Donald Nuss developed a minimally invasive technique to correct it in the 1990s. In the Nuss Procedure, which is now used around the world, the surgeon threads a curved metal bar under the sternum to push it out into a normal position. The bar is then anchored to the ribs and remains in place for approximately two years so the chest wall can harden in its new position. Then the bar is removed during a second surgery. Nuss is now retired from CHKD, but his partners there and at Eastern Virginia Medical School continue to refine the procedure he developed and are currently collaborating with modeling and simulation researchers from ODU to do two things - design a new device to improve the procedure, and develop a hands-on simulation to train physicians to perform it safely.
Rick McKenzie, professor of modeling, simulation and visualization engineering, is the principal investigator on a study to develop a tool to improve the process of extracting the metal bar during the second surgical procedure.
The tool - developed with Sebastian Bawab, professor of mechanical engineering; doctoral engineering student Krzysztof Rechowicz; and Dr. Robert Obermeyer of CHKD - is designed to make the extraction of the bar simpler and quicker.
The ODU device is designed to address the frustration surgeons had expressed about the previous extraction tool used for the Nuss Procedure, according to McKenzie. "They wanted a tool that could latch onto the bar and bend it in one movement."