Sealing internal wounds is a challenging task for surgeons. To help alleviate their difficulty, MIT engineers took inspiration from origami to develop a versatile new medical patch for tears in wet tissues and organs.
Because internal surgeries involve small, specialized tools, the patch was created to fold around these tools and make insertion and use in tight spaces simpler. The patch resists contamination and biodegrades over time, which is certainly appealing for anyone who could use one.
These new patches are designed to be applied to internal wounds either directly by surgeons doing minimally invasive procedures or remotely with the use of a medical robot. In the video, they show the patch’s utility with both a surgical stapler on a flat tear and a balloon catheter for a tear in a vessel.
h/t Engadget