Project Description: 

Patients with urinary obstructions due to tumors often have a percutaneous nephrostomy tube inserted through their back and into the kidney in order to drain urine outside the body into a collecting bag. These patients often live with this tube for the remainder of their lives while fighting late stage cancer. This causes a significant amount of discomfort and pain, especially at the exit site where the tube contacts the skin. The friction between the skin and the tube leads to skin breakdown that gets exacerbated with each tube exchange, which occurs every 3 to 12 weeks. There are 65,000 nephrostomy tubes placed each year with 61% due to tumor, giving us a $1.95 billion total addressable market and a $1.2 billion service addressable market. Our solution, the NephroGuard, is a silicone port that is implanted subcutaneously with a channel for the nephrostomy tube to go through. This device reduces kinetic friction felt at the incision site and stays in place between tube exchanges, thereby reducing the pain associated with each exchange. The NephroGuard would be implanted with the placement of the first nephrostomy tube and stay in place for up to one year. Verification testing for pull out force of the tube from the port in a skin model passed the lower threshold value, indicating that it will stay in place during normal use and between exchanges. Seal integrity verification testing showed that a watertight seal is established between the NephroGuard and a 12 F nephrostomy tube. NephroGuard has the potential to alleviate the outer pain and discomfort that patients with nephrostomies live with each and every day.