While endoscopes give doctors a window into the human body, the view is usually less than crystal clear. Blood and other bodily fluids are sticky and muck up the viewing window on endoscope tips, requiring regular pauses during procedures to clean the lens end. This eats up expensive time and can be detrimental to the natural flow of a procedure, not to mention the associated cost of having the OR staff wait to clean the scope every time it gets fouled. At Harvard’s Wyss Institute, researchers have developed a new coating for endoscopes that keeps them a lot clearer while working inside the body.
The coating is a modification of SLIPS (Slippery Liquid-Infused Porous Surfaces), a technology developed at Wyss that prevents most materials from sticking to surfaces treated with it. SLIPS makes surfaces effectively self-cleaning, but it had to be modified to survive the chemicals it would encounter within the body and the physical stress that the surface of an endoscope encounters.
The researchers stuck a few layers of silica nanoparticles onto an endoscope lens, creating a rough surface full of microscopic holes. These were then filled with silicone oil that created an outer liquid surface over the endoscope lens.
The lens repels just about any liquid the body can throw at it and when the liquid layer eventually wears away, another drop of silicone oil can be used to replenish it. In between procedures, the endoscope can be sterilized using existing protocols, refreshed with a bit of silicone oil, and made ready to be used again.
Study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: Transparent antifouling material for improved operative field visibility in endoscopy…
Via: Wyss Institute…
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