Mission

 

Develop a method to regulate patient temperature during surgery to prevent perioperative hypothermia and the complications that arise for low-resource settings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Background

 

Under anesthesia, our body loses its ability to regulate temperature, resulting in a core-to-peripheral redistribution of body temperature. This causes perioperative hypothermia, or hypothermia during surgery, which leads to a number of complications, such as increased risk of infection, prolonged recovery, and increased costs to both the patient and hospital.

 

Based on many weeks of needs assessment during the summer of 2015, secondary public hospitals in the Dominican Republic lack methods for regulating and monitoring patient temperature during surgery, and current solutions on the market are often designed for specific use, require manual control, are not reusable, and are expensive.

 

Our team designed a solution through mechanical engineering senior design working with our stakeholders that consists of a warming mattress placed over the operating bed to warm the patient, insulating surgical drapes to prevent heat loss, and a control system that automates temperature adjustment in response to feedback from non-invasive core body temperature measurement.

 

Future Work

 

The team’s immediate goals are to optimize materials and assembly, reduce costs, improve the heating element, develop a reliable tympanic membrane thermometer, reduce power consumption, and manufacture the full-scale prototype. They will begin drafting sustainability plans and testing protocol working with the FDA and IRB on campus as well as market strategies with the help of the Tech Transfer office. In addition, they will travel to the Dominican Republic in August 2016 for user feedback studies, data collection and networking with new and existing stakeholders, such as the Ministry of Health and medical device distributors.

 

Team History

 

Our team conducted needs assessment in the Dominican Republic in summer of 2015. The need driving our project, among an extensive list of others, was discovered through nearly 200 hours of observation and conversations with many doctors and nurses in public hospitals and private clinics, primarily in the emergency and surgery departments in the cities of Jarabacoa and Cabrera.

 

The need to regulate patient temperature during surgery was brought into MECHENG 450, Design and Manufacturing III, through the mechanical engineering department where the project was created and carried to a functional proof-of-concept prototype.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Acknowledgments

 

The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi financially sponsored this project through a project grant for summer travel in the Dominican Republic and prototyping materials. Dr. Kathleen Sienko, representing the Global Health Design Initiative and Insitu: Center for Socially Engaged Design, was the project mentor for MECHENG 450 and continues to advise the team.

 

The team would also like thank the following individuals for their assistance on the project:

 

Lucila Santana, R.N.

Dra. Maria Plasencia, M.D.

Dr. Paul Reynolds, M.D.

Dr. James Geiger, M.D.

Eldy Zuniga, B.S

Niles Mayrand, Jr.

Toby Donajkowski

John Pitre, Jr., M.S.

Michael Deininger, Ph.D.

Roland Chen, Ph.D.

Josh Bishop-Moser, Ph.D.