Surgical diamond wheels for minimally invasive surgery in bone resection under saline supply

Abstract

Bone grinding with miniature ball-end diamond wheels, called diamond burs by surgeons, is widely used for surgical resection of bones. However, they are associated with thermal injury to adjacent tissues, because of a considerable amount of grinding heat. To solve this problem, previous studies proposed surgical diamond grinding wheels with hydrophilic surface. However, in the experiments, pure water was used as coolant instead of saline, which is typically used in surgery. Then the grinding performances of the wheels under a saline supply were investigated. On the basis of findings, new grinding wheels with hydrophobic surfaces were developed in the hopes of preventing strong loading of bone swarf. These wheels significantly and stably suppressed bone temperature elevation compared with commercial and previously developed wheels.