Abdoman

An interactive model of the abdoman on which different suture techniques can be tested.

Goals of the project

After abdominal surgeries, patients often suffer from a variety of complications. After bowel surgeries anastomotic leakages and ileus can occur. If the anastomosis starts to leak in the days after an operation the patient will become very sick due to an inflammation of the abdominal cavity. Without immediate surgery there is a chance that the patient will not survive.

When surgery is being performed on the abdominal muscles, muscles can easily tear if the patient coughs. This is due to the inflexibility of current sutures. If this tearing occurs, the patient is highly susceptible to infection and hernias which, at the least, requires an additional surgery and could also be deadly to the patient.

These complications currently occur at an alarming rate with hernias occurring 40% of the time in post surgical patients and anastomotic leakages occurring in 8-12% of patients. Both complications cause a significant number of deaths each year.

The aim of the Abdoman project is to make a functional abdoman in which different suture techniques can be tested.