Layah A. Khalif

For my Senior Design Project, my group and I, along with our sponsor, Ochsner Health Center in Baton Rouge, sought out to create a radial board design for heart catheterization surgeries. We championed the design of an arm board that is radiolucent, height and length adjustable, rotatable at the patient shoulder, and that has bilateral operating capabilities. Cardiac catheterization, a diagnostic procedure used to detect defects in the heart’s chambers, valves and coronary arteries is performed by way of insertion of a catheter into either the femoral (thigh), brachial (arm) or radial (arm) artery. At this time, our sponsor, Ochsner Health System Baton Rouge, performs cardiac catheterization surgeries by inserting the catheter into the radial artery. Arm stabilization during this procedure, however, is done by way of a nurse holding the patient’s arm in the proper positioning throughout the duration of the surgery. This method proves to be an inefficient use of time and resources and allows for a great deal of human error that may impact surgical outcomes. Ochsner was seeking a radial board design that would replace the nurse during surgery. The group has been able to observe the cardiac catheterization procedure at Ochsner Hospital in the Cardiac Lab room and pinpoint requirements and constraints of the design. The current radial board on the market that is used by Ochsner does not have the necessary capabilities of being pivoted to the medial line. The current board also only allows for supine patient positioning where the patient’s arms are parallel with the transverse plane (lying on their back with arms in a “T”). Proper positioning, however, involves not only this "T" position for catheter insertion, but the anatomical position as well for x-ray visualization of arteries after insertion and for the duration of the surgery. Our goal was to design an inexpensive radial board for cardiac catheterization that met all the requirements of the client and that would prove to be more effective than those currently on the market.

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This project was completed under the guidance of the Louisiana State University Biological and Agricultural Engineering Department and Ochsner Health System Baton Rouge. 

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For more information, see below.