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SALT LAKE CITY — In Mongolia, belly pain can be devastating. People there often don't have access to the simple surgery required to fix it; and with little financial reserve, they usually can't afford it anyway.
An idea born from an iPhone flashlight is changing that.
"I used my iPhone light to be able to look into a drawer for clothes, and the light flashed in my eyes and the first thing I thought of was: Wow, that's as bright as a laparoscope," said Dr. John Langell, a surgeon at University Hospital and the George E. Wahlen VA Medical Center.
Langell, who also serves as executive director of the University of Utah Center for Medical Innovation, took his idea to his bioinnovations students.
The students came up with the Xenoscope — a thin tube with a tiny camera on the end that allows surgeons to see into the abdominal cavity through a few small holes rather than a large incision.
The Xenoscope preforms the same function as the laparascope but costs just $85 to make in mass production. The traditional laparoscope costs $700,000.
"It can plug into anything, so you no longer need a proprietary, expensive system in an operating room. You can connect to a tablet. You can connect to an HDTV. You can go into a standard operating room and plug into their systems or even run it off your laptop," Langell said.
A laparoscope is hooked up to a tower of bulky equipment in the operating room and, while effective, isn't very mobile.
"How do we take multi-thousand dollars of equipment and take it into Mongolia? How do we transport it? How do we even purchase it?" asked Dr. Ray Price, director of the Center for Global Surgery at the University of Utah.
The Xenoscope is a part of his plan to make surgical care accessible to everyone.
"This box replaces the multi-hundred-thousand-dollar tower systems being used in OR's," he said.
Thirty-three million people face financial ruin each year due to surgical costs, according to the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery. That includes patients here in the U.S., where healthcare costs continue to skyrocket.
"We've had a patient in my office just this year that said they had to sell their home, the things that they have, because of the catastrophic healthcare expenses," Price said.
Steve Jensen is one of the first people to benefit from the Xenoscope in Utah. "The hard part is trying to take it easy for a couple of weeks like I'm supposed to," said Jensen, who lives in Murray.
Price used a Xenoscope to fix Jensen's hernia.
"They go through two small incisions below the belly button," said Jensen, who believes the Xenoscope is good news. "I'm all about lowering costs. I've got insurance, and it's even going to be expensive for me."
The tool is also disposable in the U.S., removing the risk of cross contamination. Minimally invasive surgeries — made affordable by the Xenoscope — have faster recovery time and less risk. Doctors say that's helping tackle a critical shortage.
This is the first of many devices in development at the U. NASA is interested in using the Xenoscope to someday do surgeries in space.
