Architects Mike Tonkin and Anna Liu have created a prototype stent that adapts to a patient's throat for use after tracheal transplant surgery.
Tonkin and Liu, founders of London-based architecture studio Tonkin Liu, adapted the design of their single surface structural technology ? called the shell lace structure ? to create the stent.
Unlike the tubular mesh stents commonly used after surgery on the windpipe, their version is C-shaped and fits to the individual shape of each person's throat.
The prototype has been manufactured from medical grade silicone with a perforated surface that allows the wound to breath, and makes drug delivery to the tissues possible, which together prevent infection.
Tonkin Liu's prototype stent is a smaller version of its聽shell lace architecture structure To insert the stent, doctors must turn the item inside out and place it inside the windpipe cavity. It then unfurls and sits firmly within the patient's body due to the natural external pressure, without danger of slippage.
The prototype is "a remarkable and unprecedented stent invention, that is ground-breaking in the context of currently available devices," said Martin Birchall, UCL professor of laryngology.
Tonkin and Liu created the architectural shell lace structure, following a decade of research, as a聽sheet material that would perform as efficiently as items in the natural world.
The sheets were designed through abstracting design principles from the physiological makeup of ...