Cooper University Health Care’s Center for Innovation recently announced it received a $100,000 grant from the Foundation for Health Advancement to study and develop a new body cavity evacuator used to drain fluid from the pleural space of the lungs.
The novel device, invented and developed by Cooper thoracic surgeon Dr. David Shersher and Cooper pulmonologist Dr. Wissam Abouzgheib, has the potential to provide a more effective, less invasive way to drain fluid from the body than current methods. Evacuators are devices used by physicians to remove fluids from different parts of the body following surgery or certain illnesses. The physicians developed the new device to address a condition called pleural effusion. Pleural effusion is fluid that collects in the pleural space, which is the space between the two layers of the pleura, the thin covering that protects and cushions the lungs.
The grant funding will be used for the development and testing of several protypes devices. While originally developed as a solution to pleural empyema, testing may show further uses of the evacuator to treat other conditions.