Surgeons at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and a biomedical engineer teamed up to devise a new way to "fix," or stabilize, broken ribs. By reducing trauma and pain, the procedure could benefit the 100,000 patients per year in the U.S. who suffer multiple broken ribs.
Dr. Peter Dillon, chief of surgery at Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and professor of surgery at Penn State College of Medicine, spurred the team to develop a minimally-invasive way to stabilize broken ribs.
Surgeon Dr. Don Mackay knows firsthand how much it hurts to breathe after a chest injury: He suffered broken ribs himself in a car crash.
As chief of minimally invasive surgery at the Penn State Medical Center, Dr. Randy Haluck had a lot of experience using a thoracoscope to do surgery in the chest through very small incisions. He thought the scope could be adapted to repair broken ribs in a way that was much less traumatic to patients than the conventional procedure.
Biomedical engineer Barry Fell experimented with a slab of ribs from a local grocery store. Like Mackay, he has personal experience with broken ribs.
Kevin Harter, now the director of Penn State's Center for Medical Innovation, helped shepherd the team through the intricacies of taking their new procedure to market.