Monitor touches a nerve

A Fraunhofer-led research team is developing a monitoring system that triggers an alarm to alert the surgeon if an elevated risk of nerve damage presents itself during an operation.

The alert warns the surgeon that the position of his scalpel is dangerously close to the nerve leading to the patient’s vocal cords, signalling excessive pressure on the nerve.

Nerves are difficult to detect with the naked eye because they have the same colour and structure as connective tissue and minor blood vessels. The risk can be severe - if the nerve serving the vocal cords is damaged during an operation on the thyroid gland, for example, the patient might be plagued by chronic hoarseness, loss of voice or breathlessness.

The alarm system was developed by the Fraunhofer Institute for Biomedical Engineering (IBMT), Mainz University Hospital and the Robert Bosch Hospital in Stuttgart, along with companies Dr. Osypka, Reinhardt Microtech and Inomed Medizintechnik.