Medical Devices

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Various widespread diseases associated with airway constriction can be combatted using airway stents. However, such stents are either prone to clogging themselves or tend to invade neighboring tissue. Vanderbilt engineers have developed a technology that avoids both of these pitfalls by combining the use of tissue-friendly silicone with active cilia for mucus clearing.

High-resolution pharyngeal manometry (HRM) provides an inexpensive and objective method for analyzing the pharynx during natural sleep and can be utilized to select candidates for certain surgical procedures for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).

An interdisciplinary team of Vanderbilt doctors and engineers has designed a more user-friendly mounting system for radiation protection shields that maintains a high level of protection from hazardous scattered radiation without impeding the workflow of interventional radiologists.

This device is designed to assist physical therapists in collection of objective data during gait analysis, to facilitate appropriate assistive gait device prescription, to provide patients and therapists feedback during gait training, and to reduce wrist and shoulder injuries with cane usage.Currently gait characteristics are "measured" in a clinic-based atmosphere. This has two limitations: (i) subjective allocation of "measures" of gait characteristics and (ii) limited data based on trials in the clinic ONLY. What this technology is designed to do is achieve freedom from both of these limitations. The measurements are objective and numerical values (force etc.) and the clinic could provide the cane to the user for obtaining a much more extensive data set including use during normal life activities at home etc.