Wearable long duration postoperative topical cryotherapy for enhanced pain management

About This Grant

Project Summary and Abstract More than 600k deaths in the US and Canada have been attributed to opioids since 1999, which continue to present a significant public health threat. Surgery is a key triggering event to introduce opioids to patients, which can lead to long-term dependency. Of the 51.4 million surgeries performed yearly in the US, >3 million previously opioid-naïve patients continue to fill opioid prescriptions past 3 months post-operation every year. This outcome highlights there are not sufficiently effective multimodal pain treatments in practice post-surgery to reduce the need for opioids. Topical cryotherapy is a historically proven method of pain management, but for the >40% of surgeries on the human trunk, the standard of care is still bagged ice, which is not conducive to long-term pain mitigation. The proposed work sets out to design and build a long- duration, radically ergonomic topical cryotherapy system that can deliver pain relief while supporting effective Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) protocols. This system will be designed specifically for the human trunk, where patients may not be able to use continuous cold water cryotherapy devices. By leveraging advancements in industrial cooling technologies and consumer electronics, a lightweight, minimal-hassle system is envisioned for continuous multi- week usage to reduce the need for pharmaceutical pain interventions. While this project will not conduct cryotherapy on humans or animals, computer aided design simulations will complement physical prototyping in conducting parametric studies designed to achieve therapeutic temperatures at the human skin. The cooling module and human-device interface will be simulated and then prototyped where final designs will be selected based on performance. Prototype units found to achieve therapeutic benchmarks will be reproduced in a quantity of 10 to establish consistency of the findings. The specific aims are to (1) design and build units to demonstrate concept feasibility, (2) characterize system performance in terms of temperatures, duration, and ergonomic factors, and (3) prepare documentation for future manufacturing.