Vacuum Assisted Wound Closure on the cheap
No one really knows why, but for an open wound, simply applying suction dramatically speeds healing times. (The theory is that the negative pressure draws bacteria out, and encourages circulation.) But for almost everyone, that treatment is out of reach—simply because the systems are expensive—rentals cost at least $100 a day and need to be recharged every six hours.
No more. Danielle Zurovcik, a doctoral student at MIT, has created a hand-powered suction-healing system that costs about $3.
Vacuum assisted wound closure, in my opinion, is one of the most elegant and important advances in surgery in the last 25 years. Simply, it is a means of wound treatment in which a sponge is placed into a wound bed, sealed off with a thin plastic dressing and hooked up to a negative pressure (vacuum) system (A company called KCI currently corners the market). The continuous negative pressure creates an environment which is less hospitable to bacteria and more amenable to healing. Additionally, costly and traumatic surgical procedures traditionally used to cover wounds such as musculocutaneous flaps can often be avoided.
Great stuff. True innovation.
