In laparoscopic surgery, surgical instruments are inserted into the body through trocars to interact with the patient’s tissues. The laparoscopic instrument placed inside a trocar is in contact with a series of overlapping seals that fit tightly around the instrument to maintain gas pressure within the body cavity. Friction forces generated at the instrument–trocar seal interface, hinder surgeons’ haptic perception. As a consequence, the surgeon may have difficulty in perceiving differences in tissue resistance especially when the magnitude of tissue contact forces is similar to the seal resistance force. To address this issue, some trocar designs use pressurized air to create a seal that also supports the shaft without friction, but this technique requires extra equipment and can be noisy. In this project, we aim to develop a novel seal-free laparoscopic trocars which can provide frictionless support to the surgical instruments and leak-proof interface.

Interested? Contact Mostafa Atalla, m.a.a.atalla@tudelft.nl