Abstract
The objective of the present research was to investigate the thermal injury in the brain after minimally invasive electrosurgery using instruments with copper-doped diamond-like carbon (DLC-Cu) surface coating. The surface morphologies of DLC-Cu thin films were characterized using scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy. Three-dimensional brain models were reconstructed using magnetic resonance imaging to simulate the electrosurgical operation. In adult rats, a monopolar electrosurgical instrument coated with the DLC-Cu thin film was used to generate lesions in the brain. Animals were sacrificed for evaluations on postoperative days 0, 2, 7, and 28. Data indicated that the temperature decreased significantly when minimally invasive electrosurgical instruments with nanostructure DLC-Cu thin films were used and continued to decrease with increasing film thickness. On the other hand, the DLC-Cu-treated device created a relatively small thermal injury area and lateral thermal effect in the brain tissues. These results indicated that the DLC-Cu thin film minimized excessive thermal injury and uniformly distributed the temperature in the brain. Taken together, our study results suggest that the DLC-Cu film on copper electrode substrates is an effective means for improving the performance of electrosurgical instruments.
Highlights
In recent years, there has been considerable concern over the application of electrosurgical instruments in dental surgery
Various methods have been reported to reduce thermal damage caused by electrosurgical instruments, other evidences indicate that minimally invasive electrosurgery can cause serious injuries to surrounding organs/tissues such as the blood vessels and nerves [4]
The samples were observed by Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) to evaluate the effect of the microstructural variation of the diamond-like carbon using nanostructure surface treatment (DLC-Cu) thin film on the electrosurgical instruments
Summary
There has been considerable concern over the application of electrosurgical instruments in dental surgery. Various methods have been reported to reduce thermal damage caused by electrosurgical instruments, other evidences indicate that minimally invasive electrosurgery can cause serious injuries to surrounding organs/tissues such as the blood vessels and nerves [4]. To investigate the thermal damage caused by minimally invasive electrosurgical instruments, the maximum temperatures and dimensions of the surgical region must be determined. The three-dimensional (3D) FEM has been widely used for the thermal analysis of minimally invasive electrosurgical instruments [11], to investigate the thermal damage to tissues during clinical surgery. This method was adopted to investigate and compare the thermal
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