Purpose:
to register the design, development and testing of new surgical instruments in order to establish a pipeline for creation of new technologies and products for the ophthalmologic practice
Methods:
This study was planned with the following landmarks: Production Selection, Functional Description, Numerical Evaluations of the Functions, Training Cost, Specification and Requirement, Rapid Prototyping and Re-Evaluation. All instruments were made with surgical grade stainless steel using the UNIFESP’s Bioengineering Laboratory with strict dimensions set for ophthalmologic surgery. The instruments were used in ocular surface surgery, cornea and refractive surgery, cataract surgery, retinal and vitreous surgery. All surgeons were asked to answer survey about the performance and impressions regarding the instrument
Results:
Seven surgical instruments were built and tested in surgeries. The instruments were: atraumatic forceps for amniotic membrane surgery, atraumatic needle tweezers for penetranting keratoplasty, toric marker for refractive and cataract surgery, capsulorhexis forceps, IOL extraction forceps, chopper for phacoemulsification, microcannula with external lumen 20-gauge and internal lumen 23-gauge and microcannula for cromevitrectomy
Conclusions:
All instruments had an overall positive response from the surgeons. We are confident that this project was essential to propel further research and technological developments of surgical innovation in this still unexplored academic area
Keywords: shape and contour • small incision cataract surgery • training/teaching cataract surgery