United States.
With the help of camera-guided endoscopes, doctors get a look inside body cavities to diagnose and treat many different conditions. In the United States alone, up to 20 million endoscopies are performed on patients each year.
But even for the most experienced users of the endoscope, the instruments can prove challenges to use them effectively; this is due to the fact that blood and other body fluids obscure the camera lens quite a bit in the midst of critical procedures.
This problem inspired a team led by Joanna Aizenberg, a member of the Wyss Core Faculty, to design a transparent surface coating for an endoscope lens that could effortlessly keep blood and other fluids at bay. The idea was based on conversations Aizenberg had with clinical collaborators, who were quick to lament the propensity for endoscopes to become cloudy midway through the procedure.
Returning to the portfolio of SLIPS (Flammable Liquid Slippery Porous Surfaces) technologies already invented by Aizenberg, they set out to design a specialized SLIPS coating that would prevent body fluids from blocking the optical field of view of camera-guided endoscopes.
Aizenberg's SLIPS technology creates self-cleaning, non-wetting surfaces that can withstand almost any scale challenge a surface may face. But to develop the technology for endoscopic use, the team needed to tailor SLIPS specifically to withstand the harsh environment of a living body cavities.
"In addition to being fully transparent and able to cover the curvature of the glass camera lens in the endoscope, the coating also needs to withstand constant contact and abrasion with soft tissues and corrosive body fluids," said Steffi Sunny, co-first author of the study and a graduate researcher at Wyss.
To achieve this, the team deposited silica nanoparticles layer by layer on a glass camera lens of an endoscope. These silica layers create a porous surface that, at the nanoscale, would be considered "rough" and filled with caverns. They then functionalized this "rough" surface and infused it with a medical-grade silicone oil, filling the porous cavities and creating a self-reinforcing liquid layer.
The end result, a fully biocompatible coating, which can withstand many standard sterilization procedure uses and protocols, and can even be reapplied with silicone oil intermittently to maintain its extreme repellency.
Source: www.seas.harvard.edu
