Kidney Transplant Trainer
Kidney transplantation can be the best treatment for patients with end stage renal disease for both quantity and quality of life. The major key step of the procedure is the vascular anastomosis. Anastomosis time and quality are critical to the outcomes of renal transplantation for both graft function and patient survival. Kidney transplantation is performed in teams, with the assisting surgeon often a surgical resident. US general surgery residents average only 6.6 kidney transplants for the entirety of 5 year residency. Surgical simulators have been developed for this critical and time sensitive step. However, these simulator are either 1. low-fidelity low-cost models requiring significant crafting time to recreate or 2. high-fidelity, high-cost models requiring industrial manufacturing which are inaccessible to most clinicians. Dr’s. Brian Chen and Dennis Sonnier worked with the Ochsner BioDesign Lab to address this unmet need. Together they designed, fabricated, and deployed a modular, high-fidelity, re-usable, yet low-cost 3DP kidney simulator. Surgical trainees derived multiple benefits from access to this simulator, including practicing in a risk-free environment:
- The setup of the anastomosis as well as suturing and assisting a vascular anastomosis.
- The use of surgical loupes.
- The use both Ryder or Castro style needle drivers.
- Techniques on variable anatomies, e.g. Deep body habitus, Short vessels, Large graft
- Fixing mistakes, e.g. How to salvage an anastomosis in setting of backwall bite or air knot.
Please contact us if you have any questions or are interested in creating your own simulator.
Weissenbacher A, Oberhuber R, Cardini B, Weiss S, Ulmer H, Bösmüller C, Schneeberger S, Pratschke J, Öllinger R. The faster the better: anastomosis time influences patient survival after deceased donor kidney transplantation. Transpl Int. 2015 May;28(5):535-43.
