Project Description: 

Surgeons, nurses, and technicians in interventional radiology often encounter clutter on the back table, confusion regarding multiple catheters and wires, and contamination of items that should be sterile in the angiosuite environment. During Interventional Radiology surgeries, multiple wires and catheters are needed for procedures. Wires are hard to manipulate and catheters get easily deformed permanently. These items can also be up to 5 feet long and have to be maintained during the procedure within the sterile field, a very reduced space. These items get contaminated in about 10% of surgeries, corresponding to over 150,000 contaminations per year in the US. Currently, wires and catheters are stored openly on the back table or even on the patient themselves before they are used by the surgeon. This can lead to error and frustration in the OR. Our prototype has four main components: a spool, cartridge, interlocking system, and saline box. The spool is a straightforward design that allows a wire or catheter to be coiled around an axis for easy and compact storage. The cartridge provides a stable base to hold the spool vertically, allows the spool to rotate freely about its axis so that the wire or catheter can be easily unraveled, and it contains the tracks for the interlocking system. This system involves a T-track rail that allows cartridges to interlock with one another, providing additional stability and preventing the cartridges from falling over when a catheter or wire is pulled out from the spool. The last component of this design is completely separated, consisting of a box that can be filled with saline. It contains three rollers made from an absorbent material on the inside of the box which allows for the wire/catheter to have pressure applied to it as it is pulled through the box.