Low-Cost, High-Fidelity Skin and Intestine Surrogates for Surgical Training

Organ surrogates play a pivotal role in training surgical residents, offering a safe and cost-effective alternative to live human patients or animals. However, existing surrogates often fall short, either due to their high cost or inability to accurately replicate the mechanical behavior and anatomical complexity of human tissue. This study aims to address these limitations by developing affordable, realistic, and biomechanically accurate organ surrogates tailored for surgical training.

Our methods involve 3D printing customized molds for pour casting, injection molding, and rotational molding, employing off-the-shelf platinum-cure silicone rubbers and specially formulated silicone-based blends as base materials. This approach ensures cost-effectiveness and allows utilizing commercially available materials and accessible laboratory equipment, enabling low-cost in-house fabrication of multi-layered skin and intestine surrogates for surgical training.

Feedback received from surgical residents and surgeons at the University of Missouri School of Medicine indicates that our surrogates consistently outperform industry-standard models in terms of biomechanical accuracy. Moreover, our cost analysis revealed that our fabrication methods yield surrogates that are over 90% less expensive than commercial alternatives.

The skin and intestine surrogates developed in this study demonstrate the feasibility of creating affordable, high-fidelity surgical training models using accessible materials and established fabrication techniques. By addressing the limitations of existing surrogates, this work lays the foundation for developing a broader range of anatomical models. These advances have the potential to improve the effectiveness and accessibility of surgical training.