Forceps. Scalpel. Nerve Ninja: UW-Madison engineers devise tool to limit nerve damage in surgery
A patient should never come out of the operating room with more pain than they went in with.
That's the thinking behind a group of UW-Madison engineers whose invention aims to make surgical incisions easier and reduce the incidence of accidental cuts from free-floating scalpels.
Combining two traditional surgery tools — a forceps and a scalpel — into one, Lauren Fitzsimmons, Molly Paras and Zach Spears have perfected the "Nerve Ninja." They are the first Badger biomedical engineering team in a dozen years to qualify as a top-five undergraduate finalist in the National Collegiate Inventors Competition.
The Nerve Ninja was initially developed by a group of eight students in a biomedical engineering class held in spring 2023 after a then-orthopedic surgical resident at UW Hospital approached Professor John Puccinelli with a problem: Too many people are being injured in surgical procedures, especially sensitive ones such as carpal tunnel, where the slip of a scalpel in an attempt to cut fascia tissue can cause serious nerve damage.
Behind those errors is the reality surgeons face in the operating room: Often, both hands are being used, one likely with forceps to hold skin or other organs in place, the other using the scalpel to cut.
By combining the two tools into one, a scalpel cannot extend further than the forceps allow and free up a surgeon's hand to better control the cuts the scalpel makes.
"Anatomy in this area of the hand is so complex that there's a lot of room for error," Fitzsimmons said. "You can just accidentally nick the nerve, and then the patient leaves in more pain that they came in with ... they can't do daily things like move their hand."
The Nerve Ninja is a forceps with a blade aligned perpendicularly atop one of the arms in a metal sheath. Once the surgeon has the forceps in place, the blade can be extended, like a retractable utility knife. Because of the blade's fixed position, it will only cut tissue resting on top of the forceps and can't cut deeper than the tool itself.
"After we started doing our research, we (realized) this could be used in many other applications, whenever you want to cut tissue but prevent the blade from slipping too deep on accident," Paras said.
Before the judges
Later this month, a slate of judges, all already in the National Inventor Hall of Fame, will determine whether the Nerve Ninja will make the cut, taking home a $10,000 grand prize and an accelerated patent process, allowing the students to capitalize on their invention.
The competition, set for Oct. 16-17, will take the students to Washington, D.C., to present their invention and take a tour of the U.S. patent and trademark office in Arlington, Virginia.
A "People's Choice" award the general public can vote on could also grant the UW-Madison team an accelerated patent process and $2,000 prize.
As part of the competition, they'll go up against other students from Johns Hopkins University, Duke University, New York University and Florida Atlantic University, and attempt to beat out other biomedical inventions. Those inventions include devices that decrease risk in fetal surgeries, 3D-printed meniscus tissues, computer interfaces that allow people who are paralyzed to control devices like wheelchairs with their thoughts and eye movements and a slate of products supporting incontinence in dogs and preventing early euthanasia as a result.
Outside of class
Fitzsimmons, Paras and Spears kept the project going on their own after they were effectively "banned" from continuing it in class. With a working prototype in hand, they'd met the class requirements to complete the design and needed to move on to something new. But everyone on the team wanted to take the invention further by finding a way to make a metal prototype that could actually be used in an operating room and potentially incorporating a company.
A year and a half later, the three students have established Badger Surgical Solutions — with a logo of a red badger with forceps along its head — and secured a provisional patent through the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, a nonprofit arm of the university that files for patents and trademarks on its behalf. They'll go for a full patent before December, whether the team wins a patent accelerator prize or not.
"It was very inspiring to see my fellow classmates be as passionate about wanting to make a difference in patient and surgeon lives, and I think that's what really pushed us through," Spears said.
