2022-2023

    For my senior capstone project, my team worked with the spinal surgery company SeaSpine to design a trial instrument for spinal surgery. We won the Excellence in Mechanical Engineering prize, the largest prize of the capstone competition, as well as the Best ME Video Award.

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    The surgical procedure anterior lumbar interbody fusion (ALIF) requires the surgeon to choose the correct implant size for the patient during the surgery using a trialing device. Currently, surgeons use a set of around 43 trial sizes – solid titanium wedges which each replicate the size and shape of one available implant size – to determine the correct implant sizing. The trial implants are screwed onto an insertion rod and impacted with a hammer for insertion.

 

    For each surgery, the surgeon and their assistants must place, test, and analyze many trial sizes before determining the one which fits the patient the best. This process takes a long time, which increases the danger to the patient. It also involves many tools rotating through many people’s hands, increasing the likelihood of infection.

  Our solution was a device which could expand inside the disc space and give the surgeon both tactile and numerical feedback for the height and angle of implant to use.

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