Silicone mesh will replace plaster

Alexandra Samuilkina, High-tech

Students of the University of Illinois have developed a mesh structure that can become a full-fledged replacement for plaster and save the patient from many inconveniences.

A snapshot from the Illinois start-up revolutionizing cast design press release – VM

Unlike conventional plaster, Cast21 silicone mesh allows you to leave most of the skin in the fracture area open. This solves many problems of those who face limb fractures – you can wash with such a mesh, the skin under it does not sweat. In addition, nothing prevents scratching the fracture site, which causes especially a lot of inconvenience when using plaster.

The mesh itself consists of several hollow silicone tubes that harden immediately after the doctor pours special liquids into them. When the liquids inside are mixed, the mesh becomes as hard as medical plaster. The creators of the development claim that Cast21 is comparable in cost with standard analogues, and thanks to the flexibility inherent in silicone, it significantly exceeds similar developments that are printed on 3D printers.

At the moment, the project is at the stage of finding investors for the production of the first batch of grids. Nevertheless, it is expected that Cast21 prototypes will begin to be tested on patients as early as mid-2017, and in the future, the creators of Cast21 also plan to use similar nets for the treatment of fractures in animals.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru  18.10.2016