THE SYNTHETIC CADAVER THAT COULD CHANGE MEDICINE THE MODELS TO TRAIN SURGEONS BREATHE, BLEED AND EVEN MOVE
For medical students, the shortage of cadavers means losing out on using one of the best tools to practise surgery. But one company claims it has come up with a solution; synthetic cadavers that are so realistic, they move and react like a real human.
From skin with tissue to complete organs and elastic tendons, the synthetic cadavers by SynDaver are remarkable replicas of the human body.
Like the human body, they consist of 85 per cent water along with a variety of fibres, salts and organic compounds.
But rather than acting as a lifeless person, the cadavers play the part of a live patient.
The models bleed, breathe, move and even have pupils that dilate when they are exposed to light.
Dr Christopher Sakezles, a Tampa-native, founded SynDaver Labs in 2004 when he needed to test medical devices but didn’t have funding for the required animal studies.
‘It is obviously good not only for ethical reasons, but also because avoiding animal use saves a great deal of time and money,’ said Dr Sakezles.
‘So, I started designing synthetic organs to test devices and over time they became very elaborate.’
Each of the artificial muscles, tendons, nerves and organs matches the mechanical and thermal properties of living tissue, according to the company.
The ‘SynDaver patients’ also feature an open source, tabletcontrolled ‘physiology engine that controls body motions and all aspects of synthetic biology,’ the company says.
For medical students, this could allow them to perform practice operations in far more realistic settings. According to Dr Sakezles, the SynDaver is the most sophisticated hands-on surgical simulator ever devised. ‘We are the only company in the world that makes synthetic cadavers,’ Dr Sakezles says.
‘All other anatomical models on t he market are made from plastic or rubber, while ours are made from a proprietary library of more than 100 synthetic human tissues.’
‘The real goodies are inside. There is a full venous and arterial system too - with a chambered heart pumping heated blood - drainage flow on the venous side and peristaltic on the arterial,’ Dr Sakezles said on a recent Reddit AMA.
The cadavers are reusable. Once ‘surgery’ is performed on one of the bodies, engineers can then fix the cadaver by replacing parts for a cost of around $2,500 (£1,620).