New innovator: SecuRetract reduces keyhole surgery complications

Conor O’Shea is a postgraduate researcher at UCC with a penchant for invention. An engineer by training, O’Shea has come up with a new design for the retractor typically used in keyhole surgery. What makes O’Shea’s design different and of real interest to the medical community is that it is minimally invasive. This leads to better surgical outcomes and speeds up patient throughput for the hospital.

O’Shea became interested in the field of medical devices while participating in a biodesign module at UCC. It links clinicians with interdisciplinary student teams to solve real life clinical problems. “SecuRetract has been designed to answer an unmet clinical need identified by two local consultant colorectal surgeons,” explains O’Shea who began work on the device as part of an Enterprise Ireland-supported research masters in mechanical engineering in 2012.

“Our goal is to eliminate one of the most common complications experienced by surgeons during keyhole surgery – dealing with the 20ft-long bowel spilling around the abdominal cavity. One common solution is to place the patient in a steep head-down position and to use a sharp metal forceps to retract the bowel. However, this can significantly increase the risk of intra-operative complications such as increased intracranial and intraocular pressure, lower blood pressure and impaired circulation.”

O’Shea says SecuRetract eliminates the risks associated with this surgical positioning. “Our technology vastly outperforms current solutions by reducing the dependency on Trendelenburg (head down) positioning. It also minimises trauma on entry by using a thinner instrument port and eliminates the risk of injury to internal organs with a soft inflatable interface,” he says. “Unlike existing retractors, SecuRetract is specifically designed to maximise small bowel retraction while simplifying the procedure and ultimately making surgery easier and safer.”

SecuRetract is expected to spin out from UCC by the end of March and the patent-pending disposable technology is due to go on sale at the beginning of 2017. The product is aimed at laparoscopic surgeons worldwide with colorectal and gynaecological procedures the initial target market.

“The minimally invasive surgical market is expanding rapidly and more than 7.5 million laparoscopic procedures are performed each year worldwide, including more than 2 million in the USA alone. SecuRetract has the potential to be used in as many as a third of these procedures, generating an estimated worldwide potential annual market of $500 million,” says O’Shea who is currently finishing his PhD.

The biodesign module is coordinated by Pádraig Cantillon-Murphy, a lecturer in engineering with a background in user-centred medical device design and the SecuRetract team also includes co-inventor, Emmet Andrews, a consultant colorectal surgeon at Cork University Hospital with experience of acquiring FDA and CE regulatory approval.

"Events such as the Emerging Medical Technologies Summit in San Francisco and the Enterprise Ireland Big Ideas Innovation Showcase have afforded us valuable exposure to both clinical and industrial opinion leaders and this has further validated the clinical need for this invention," O'Shea says.

The cost of developing the technology has been about €300,000 with most of the funding coming from two Enterprise Ireland commercialisation grants. O'Shea is now looking to raise about €1 million in next stage of funding. The retractor will be made in Ireland and is one of four products in the surgical and anaesthesiology spaces O'Shea has developed. The team's work has been recognised with a number of design awards including the The Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland Boucher-Hayes Medal for Innovation in Surgery.

O’Shea is sanguine about the competition his device faces. “To date an effective laparoscopic retractor capable of atraumatic retraction of the distended loops of the bowel has yet to be developed,” he says. “Currently we stand alone in addressing this need and that provides us with an opportunity to gain first to market traction in this rapidly growing sector.”

– OLIVE KEOGH