Abstract
Purpose. Stainless steel surgical instruments are widely used in common or complex surgical procedures. Although these have high stiffness for durability and performance stability, their weight saving is crucial for both reducing the physical load on medical staff in daily usage and performing stable mass transport in critical situations such as large-scale natural disasters and infectious diseases. The objective of this study was to develop and evaluate nonmetallic surgical instruments that are lightweight, usable, and for repeated use.
Materials and Methods. We developed Adson and DeBakey tweezers and forceps by molding and a needle holder and Cooper and Metzenbaum scissors by insert molding. Both processes used our developed polyphenylene sulfide (PPS) resin reinforced by short carbon-fiber fillers. The prototypes’ weights were measured and compared to those of conventional stainless steel instruments. The prototypes’ durability and long-term stability were assessed based on heat cyclic and accelerated aging tests. Pinching forces in the tweezers, forceps, and needle holder were measured using a push–pull gauge. Stress distribution of the scissors prototypes in cutting motions was simulated numerically. Their feasibility was assessed in an animal study mimicking common surgical procedures.
Results. The average weight of the prototypes was 13.0 g, which was about one-third of the stainless steel instruments. The developed PPS material’s flexural modulus was about 42.6% higher than that of the conventional polyamide resin-based material. The worsened breaking load of the prototypes after testing 70 times of autoclave heating and simulated 9 years’ storage was at most about 5%. The maximum pinching force of the tweezers prototype was 13.3 N and that of the forceps and needle holder prototypes were about 22% smaller and 23% larger than those of conventional stainless steel instruments. The maximum scissors bending was 2.5-fold larger than that of the stainless steel scissors. The feasibility study indicated that the prototypes could be used for cutting and suturing a pig stomach by using the tweezers prototype as a soft coagulation probe in the usual procedure.
Conclusion. The proposed surgical instruments successfully saved weight while keeping the usability and mechanical performance comparable to conventional ones because of the carbon-reinforced resin properties.
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02 June 2022
Chapter 1 “Lightweight Carbon-Reinforced Resin Surgical Instruments” was inadvertently published with the following errors (errors and corrected text are italicized):
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by AMED (grant 27-069) and JSPS KAKENHI (grant 18H01408).
Conflict of Interest Statement: This research received financial support from Toray Medical Co., Ltd., of which M. S. was an employee during this work. The other authors have no COI to report.
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Mekata, E., Yamada, A., Shimagaki, M., Kajiyama, T., Tani, T. (2021). Lightweight Carbon-Reinforced Resin Surgical Instruments. In: Takenoshita, S., Yasuhara, H. (eds) Surgery and Operating Room Innovation. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8979-9_1
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