CRICOTHYROTOMY TRAINER
BACKGROUND
Though the development of high fidelity medical simulation devices was a large part of my work at Jump Trading Simulation and Education Center (JTSEC), we also tried to develop lower fidelity models that were cheap and accurate enough to teach certain procedures. One example of a lower fidelity device I developed during my time at JTSEC was a cricothyrotomy trainer.
The goal was to be able to create a semi-accurate trainer that could be used by Emergency Medicine physicians to train their residents how to properly perform a cricothyrotomy. Since pig tracheas are very similar to human tracheas, the physicians requested that I utilize those in my design, but for the rest of the design that I just make the procedure "feel" realistic and have some visual cues of bleeding in the neck after an incision is made.
FINAL DESIGN
Since we had Mimics Innovation Suite and a 3D printer on hand already, I obtained a CT scan of the upper body of an adult male and printed it with a hole in the neck area to insert the simulation materials. I also added pegs along the neck to hold the replaceable skin flaps.
The simulation materials included first a section of fake muscle that was made with Ecoflex; I created a mold for the muscle piece in CAD so that I could print them out and have the simulation technicians manufacture as many of the exact shape of muscle as needed for the training session. Then, a layer of silicone skin was put on top. I made a mold of the silicone skin in CAD and added channels so that we could lay wires through and make channels to inject the fake blood into; we pressurized the vessels slightly when injecting the blood such that the neck would also bleed realistically when the incision was made (this was my intern at the time's brilliant idea).
I had a two week deadline for this trainer (in addition to my other projects) and it was a huge success right from the beginning. The trainer is still in use now as you can see in the following link.
