Smart sutures monitor wound healing
Follow-up of wound healing after surgery is an important step to prevent infection, but this follow-up is difficult, especially for surgeries that take place in deep parts of the body, and the delay in following up on internal wound healing may lead to serious complications that can kill the patient.
Doctors sometimes install internal sensors in the area of surgery, but these tiny devices do not interact well with weak and sensitive tissues after surgery.
To overcome this problem, a team of NUS researchers led by researcher Jun Ho from the university's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, in cooperation with the University of Singapore Institute for Health Innovation and Technology, devised a quality of smart sutures that operate without a battery and can monitor the required data on the development of the wound after the operation and send This information is transmitted wirelessly from inside the body to external electronic devices.
The researchers confirm that these smart surgical sutures contain small electronic sensors that monitor the integrity of the wound and make sure that there is no leakage or microbial contamination, while sending reports on the rate of wound healing inside the patient.
The website "Medical Express" that specializes in medical sciences stated that the smart threads are made of silk and coated with an electrically conductive polymer material that can respond to wireless signals. It is also connected to a sensor unit that works without a battery and a wireless electronic reader to receive signals from the threads inside the body.
The researchers confirm that the new threads can send signals from a depth of fifty millimeters inside the body, which makes them effective in following up the healing of deep wounds, and it is possible to increase the conduction range by increasing the conduction properties of the threads or the degree of sensitivity of the e-reader.
Follow our latest local and sports news and the latest political and economic developments via Google news