Medical assistance system

Precise drilling

This year’s Gold award winner is a system that assists doctors with keyhole cochlea implant surgery to treat inner ear deafness and profound deafness. This technique requires a channel to be drilled from the surface of the skull to the basal winding of the cochlea which can be up to 35 mm under the skullcap. Such a hole has a diameter of 2 mm at the most, and is located in the direct vicinity of anatomic structures that require protection. For this reason, the system has to work extremely precisely on the one hand, and must fulfill hygienic medical requirements such as steam sterilization and disinfection on the other. For this reason, the surgical instrument navigation system includes a drylin® N glide rail with two igus® slides. In addition, several iglide® X plain bearings were used, which are excellently suitable for use in medical applications thanks to their lubricant-freedom.