Abstract
3D-printed nasopharyngeal swabs for COVID-19 molecular diagnostic testing address the national shortage of swabs. Swab designs for adult use were placed in the public domain in March 2020. Swabs for pediatric use, however, need to be smaller and more flexible to navigate delicate pediatric nasopharyngeal cavities. We describe a novel use of maxillofacial CT scans to aid in the design of pediatric nasopharyngeal swabs.
Highlights
SUMMARY: 3D-printed nasopharyngeal swabs for COVID-19 molecular diagnostic testing address the national shortage of swabs
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a worldwide pandemic and has resulted in shortages of medical supplies, including nasopharyngeal swabs used in diagnostic tests. 3D printing provides a novel solution, and designs for 3D-printed nasopharyngeal swabs are freely distributed via a GitHub repository.[1]
At our hospital (Texas Children’s Hospital), a large pediatric tertiary-care center, a 3D-printed swab that replicated the dimensions of a commercial pediatric swab (COPAN Flock Technologies; Puritan Diagnostics) was evaluated by one of our pediatric emergency physicians
Summary
The institutional review board approved all clinical data use. Examination of maxillofacial CT scans of patients 1–3 years of age suggested that primary deflection of the swab in the sagittal plane would be sufficient to navigate from the external nares to the posterior nasopharynx. We noted that less flexible designs would get trapped in the crenulations of the nasopharyngeal passage and might require multiple attempts to reach the posterior nasopharynx, lengthening the time required to reach the sampling location and possibly injuring the delicate pediatric anatomy. On the assumption that increased navigation time and resistance correlated with patient discomfort, we chose the navigation time and a qualitative assessment of resistance as measures of patient discomfort, selecting the design with the shortest navigation time and the lowest resistance score for clinical use
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