FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — In an unassuming building on the east end of Northern Arizona University’s campus in Flagstaff, a surgical suite is set up with researchers taking on the role of surgeon.
The motions they go through are the same surgeons do as they try to treat strokes and aneurysms, but at the NAU Bioengineering Devices Laboratory, there’s not a live patient on the table. In a person’s place, there’s a 3D-printed model of the vessels in the brain.
“As engineers, 60 percent is not good enough,” Professor Tim Becker, who leads the lab at NAU, said. “Obviously we want 100 percent.”
Part of the lab’s work is trying to figure out what devices work best for treatment and why.
“A lot of the surgeons don't really understand why their device works the way it does. They have preferences and say,’ I like to use this catheter to treat this patient.’,” Becker said. “As engineers, we can control everything. We can measure all the pressures, we can set all the factors. And then we can test their devices and see which one actually works the best, and we can quantify why that happens.”
As treatments are done, the researchers can see measurements in real-time, including pressure and flow.
Becker says the lab has been working with Harvard Medical School to examine what happens to the pressures while the treatments are performed.
“We can statistically say this device is 20% better than this one, or we can get 100% approval or treatment with this device over some of the older devices,” Becker said.
However the lab isn’t just testing existing devices, but new imagining new ones as well. Currently, Becker says the school has worked with local companies to get four medical devices manufactured and they are now in the various stages of the FDA approval process.
“We call it a benchtop to bedside kind of approach,” PhD student Sophia Robertson said.
Robertson is working to grow a polymer coating to go on medical devices to eliminate the need for patients who receive devices to be placed on blood thinners.
“This essentially shields the blood from the metal and prevents clot formation,” Robertson said.
Wyatt Clark, a PhD student, is working on a device called the balloon mesh.
“Hemorrhagic stroke happens when a weakening of the blood vessel creates an aneurysm, and over time, it grows and it grows and grows, and then eventually it pops, and that's called a brain bleed. And so my medical device is aimed at preventing brain bleed,” Clark said.
The team is hoping what starts here will bring hope to patients.
“To know that I’m touching a device, I’m developing a device that hopefully nobody ever needs, but when they do need it, it’s going to be there for them,” Clark said. “All right, that’s what keeps me going.”
“The goal is to save patients and also make it not scary anymore,” Becker said. “Because stroke is probably one of the more scary kinds of issues you might have, so the more we can do to improve that- that’s our goal.”
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