Payoff Season for Fifth- Year Seniors - Old Dominion University

important technical questions
will improve students’ skills
through applied research that
may also have commercial
potential. It is a win-win-win.”
After completing the
Katsioloudis class in which the
surgical smoke project was
initially proposed, Agee took a
second class with him the
following spring so that he could
continue to work on it.
The end result was the creation
of a four-liter-volume
Plexiglas box equipped with a
system that allows the insertion
of pressurized carbon dioxide –
to represent what is injected during
surgery. (Four liters is approximately
the size of an adult’s
abdominal cavity.) A controlled
temperature environment can be
maintained in the box, which
also has a gel port for inserting
different types of surgical tools.
Agee’s contribution to the device
not only involved developing
a system for delivering the
carbon dioxide gas into the box,
but also a way to meter it and
store it. Using a paintball gun
CO2 bottle purchased at Sports
Authority, he utilized an air conditioning
gauge set to regulate
the CO2, machined a bulkhead
fitting out of brass using a lathe
in an ODU lab, and then soldered
on a Schrader valve at his
home.
Inside the box, which measures
approximately 12 inches by
8 inches, is a metal clamp for
holding a tissue sample. Three
high-speed cameras videotape
the smoke that’s created when an
inserted surgical instrument
makes an incision in the sample,
which, together with the matrices,
help record and measure the
Katsioloudis (left) and Agee
with their invention
amount of smoke inside the box.
Katsioloudis and Sakhel have
tested the surgical instruments in
a clean room at EVMS, using a
small piece of chicken as the tissue
sample.
The ODU researcher said
that once these phase one experiments
are completed, he and
Sakhel will have data showing
The Industrial and Scientific
Research Center, a collaboration
between the Department of
STEM Education and
Professional Studies and the
ODU Business Gateway, was
established to offer real-world
industrial and scientific research
opportunities for undergraduate
and graduate students.
which surgical instruments create
the greatest – and least – amount
of smoke. This information, he
said, should be of interest to surgeons
because it would give
them options for using tools that
create a smaller amount of
smoke.
Phase two of the experiments
involves an examination of the
contents of the surgical smoke
and their potential effects on surgeons.
“The composition of
surgical smoke includes a
long list of chemicals, but
the ones that are of particular
concern are acrylonitrile,
hydrogen cyanide,
benzene and formaldehyde,”
said Sakhel, who
initially proposed the
project to Katsioloudis.
“All of these are carcinogenic
and can be absorbed
through the skin and
lungs. In other words, the
donning of a facemask
will not protect against
the harmful effects of
these gases. There have
also been reports that surgical
smoke can harbor
Human Papilloma Virus
(HPV) particles and blood
fragments with the potential
of viral disease transmission
to the operator.”
Phase two of the experiments
will require a
modification to the box Katsioloudis
and his students built –
specifically, the addition of a
screen at the top of the box to
trap chemicals and particles from
the smoke, using a system inside
the box that replicates the negative
pressure created when a surgeon
inhales.
“Depending on the amount
and size of those particles, we
will send them out to a laboratory
for analysis. We want to find
out, No. 1, is the amount of those
molecules enough to create an
issue for somebody inhaling
them, and No. 2, are those particles
small enough that they can
go through the mask the surgeon
is wearing,” Katsioloudis said.
Phase three of the research
project would require additional
funding to build a specific piece
of equipment that could minimize
surgical smoke, Katsioloudis
said. For now, though, he and
Sakhel are focusing on the tasks
at hand. Once phase one is concluded
and all the data are analyzed,
the two researchers plan to
submit an article to a medical
journal, and perhaps an engineering
journal as well.
They have written a grant
proposal seeking $25,000 in
funding to continue the project
through phase two. Phase three,
Katsioloudis said, would require
major funding, and could ultimately
result in a patent.
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