Written with contributions from Brendan O’Hallarn

Surgical correction of pectus excavatum was a complex and somewhat brutal procedure until Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters (CHKD) surgeon Donald Nuss developed a minimally invasive technique to correct it in the 1990s. In the Nuss Procedure, which is now used around the world, the surgeon threads a curved metal bar under the sternum to push it out into a normal position. The bar is then anchored to the ribs and remains in place for approximately two years so the chest wall can harden in its new position. Then the bar is removed during a second surgery.

To solve a manufacturing problem which did not allow the original tool to be autoclaved (heated to high temperatures), the team reached out to David Kenealy, director of R&D CAMEE. Kenealy and R&D CAMEE’s team supervised by Travis Buchanan utilized R&D CAMEE’s CAD-CAM capabilities to create a tool component that could be autoclaved and thus reused for additional patients.

“They sent us the original CAD (computer aided design) drawings, and some aspects of the original tool weren’t suited for manufacturing,” Kenealy stated. “We worked with them to refine the drawings using their understanding of the surgical world and R&D CAMEE’s understanding of the manufacturing world.” Read more…