Robotic implant to apply tissue traction forces in the treatment of esophageal atresia

This paper introduces robotic implants as a novel class of medical robots in the context of treating esophageal atresia. The robotic implant is designed to apply traction forces to the two disconnected esophageal segments to induce sufficient growth so that the two ends can be joined together to form a functioning esophagus. In contrast to the current manual method of externally applying traction forces, the implant offers the potential to avoid prolonged patient sedation and to substantially reduce the number of X-rays required. A prototype design is presented along with evaluation experiments that demonstrate its capabilities to apply traction forces to ex vivo esophageal tissues.