Inspired by a sticky substance that spiders use to catch their prey, MIT engineers have designed a double-sided tape that can rapidly seal tissues together.
In tests in rats and pig tissues, the researchers showed that their new tape can tightly bind tissues such as the lungs and intestines within just five seconds. They hope that this tape could eventually be used in place of surgical sutures, which don’t work well in all tissues and can cause complications in some patients.
There are over 230 million major surgeries all around the world per year, and many of them require sutures to close the wound, which can actually cause stress on the tissues and can cause infections, pain, and scars. MIT researchers are proposing a fundamentally different approach to sealing tissue.
The double-sided tape can also be used to attach implantable medical devices to tissues, including the heart. In addition, it works much faster than tissue glues, which usually take several minutes to bind tightly and can drip onto other parts of the body.
News Source: MIT
