Portal de Cartagena
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A three-dimensional model of the nasal cavity, together with a computational calculation of the air flow in its interior, which allows to obtain the velocities, temperatures and pressures of the airflows in full color and with video game aesthetics, characterizes the software that has developed the researcher of the Polytechnic University of Cartagena (UPCT) Manuel Antonio Burgos Olmos to facilitate surgical interventions thanks to fluid mechanics.
The software, which will be marketed by the spin-off company Flowgy with the slogan 'The power of medical efficiency', will allow, based on images obtained with computerized axial tomography (CAT) or similar, to generate three-dimensional models in which the geometry can be modified nasal as the surgeon would, to be able to foresee and improve the surgical results through virtual surgery.
"It's very intuitive, because you get into the nose with a first-person perspective, and it allows you to operate virtually to check how much the airflow improves by eliminating nasal obstructions," explains Burgos, a professor in the Department of Thermal Engineering and Fluids, a professor at the degrees of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture of the Polytechnic.
"The similar studies that are currently carried out from TAC images are very expensive, due to the scarcity and complexity of the available programs," he adds.
The technique has already been used successfully with real patients in Seville through the operations of Professor Francisco Esteban, president of the Andalusian Otorhinolaryngology Society, and clinical trials are currently being prepared with some 300 patients from the Region of Murcia, coordinated by the Head of Otorhinolaryngology at the Hospital Morales Meseguer, Francisco Piqueras.
"By previously doing a virtual surgery, which does not touch the patient, are expected to achieve successful operations in a very high percentage," says the researcher of the UPCT, which cites American studies that estimate that about 40% of current operations by nasal obstruction are not satisfactory.
Burgos has presented its software before the scientific community, at the SCONA congresses held in London in 2018 and in Chicago at the beginning of June of this year.
"He was very interested, because it makes it easier for all surgeons to perform operations as successful as the most experienced ones and because it will be very helpful in health teaching," he says.
The researcher is finalizing the commercial launch of the product advised by the Office of Entrepreneurs and Technology-Based Companies of the UPCT and has support from the Polytechnic of Cartagena for the transfer of knowledge.
"Flowgy will not only serve to guide nasal operations, it is exportable to many other health fields, such as aesthetic surgery or prosthesis design, as well as analysis in other anatomical structures and other biological flows," says Burgos, who also presented his software to the Murcia surgical planning company Avamed Synergy.
The researcher has already patented a computational rhinomanometer with which it is possible to measure how air evolves in both orifices of the nasal cavity from images of ultrasound.
"Up to now the diagnoses of nasal obstruction are made using rhinomanometers that measure the flow of air with a covered hole, which does not correspond to the patient's normal breathing," says Burgos.
Source: UPCT
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