Students' disposable tool could represent 'the future of suture'

Although the device is still in the prototype stage, the team is said to have already received recognition and raised more than $80,000 (£50,831) this year in grant and prize money to move the project forward.

According to the students, FastStitch is needed to improve the way up to five million open abdominal surgeries are conducted annually in the US alone for treatment of cancer, liver problems and other ailments.

If incisions from those procedures are not closed properly, a patient can develop complications such as infection, herniation and evisceration, all of which require additional treatment and, in some cases, more surgery.

Addressing this problem became a biomedical engineering course assignment in which the students were asked to design and test a tool that would improve the way surgeons stitch together the strongest part of the abdomen, the muscle layer called the fascia, which is located just below the patient’s skin.

‘Doctors who have to suture the fascial layer say it can be like pushing a needle through the leather of your shoe,’ said team member Luis Hererra, a sophomore biomedical engineering major. ‘If the needle accidentally cuts into the bowel, it can lead to a sepsis infection that can be very dangerous.’