Haemostat device eliminates risk of embolism

Team Consulting, the Cambridge-based medical device design and development agency that came up with the original design for the life-saving Epi-pen, has developed the Convesaid device, which allows surgeons to spray opened blood vessels with a powdered substance that stops bleeding during an operation without any risk of introducing air into the blood vessel, which could cause a life-threatening embolism.

The handheld device, which is disposable, is currently at a functional proof of principle stage, and the agency hopes it will serve as a shop window for its expertise.

According to the British Medical Council, 30 per cent of specialist inpatient surgeries involved a bleed during the process which increased the length of hospital stay. Current devices to stop bleeding, which dispense substances known as haemostat powders, tend to entrain the powder within a stream of air. However, using these carries a risk of squirting air into an open blood vessel.

The Convesaid device is designed to be intrinsically safe, and the design team, led by head of MedTech Ben Wicks, employed a little-known principle of physics to ensure its safety. Called the Coanda effect, this states that a stream of gas will tend to follow an adjacent curved surface.