Sensor-enabled surgery adds new level of safety to spinal operations

The team, including Andreas Raabe from the Department of Neurosurgery at Inselspital, Bern University Hospital, Stefan Weber from ARTORG Center for Biomedical Engineering at the University of Bern and Olivier Chételat from the Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology (CSEM), has received CHF2m to take the project forward.

Manual spine stabilisation surgery is becoming more common as populations age and degenerative spine disease increases.

In manual spine surgery pedicle screws are used to fuse and stabilise functionally unstable vertebrae.

The functional articulation of the human vertebral spine that confers lateral and rotational mobility, static stability and compressional strength is only possible because vertebrae have a complex shape and bone density composition.

Drilling and positioning a screw into a highly variable part of the spine, whether manually or with image guidance technologies fails in around 15 percent of procedures. The screw misses the central part of the vertebrae and the sharp tip sticks out, often irritating surrounding tissue or nerves.