How it began
Borys Paton directed the E. O. Paton Electric Welding Institute in Kyiv, the leading Soviet and Ukrainian center for welding metals. According to an engineering history of Ukraine, the idea came to him after he broke the neck of his femur, when he began to consider whether tissue could be welded instead of sutured. In the early 1990s he assembled engineers and medical specialists to work on it. After experiments on laboratory animals, the team applied for a patent in 1998 and the method began to be used on patients.
Before it existed
Surgeons closed incisions and joined organs with sutures or staples, which leave foreign material in the wound. The Paton team set out to learn, at the level of cells, how tissue repairs itself after being joined, and tested the process on laboratory animals before any use on people.
How it works
The edges of the tissue are brought together and a low-voltage electric current is passed through them. The tissue is heated to about 60 to 70 degrees Celsius, at which the two sides bond with little damage to the surrounding cells. No thread is left behind. The developers reported cleaner healing than with conventional suturing.
Where it stands today
The method was the first use of electric welding to join incisions in living tissues and organs during surgery. The technique has been adopted by surgeons in a range of specialties in Ukraine. The stated long-term aim of the developers is to adapt the technology to welding bone. Borys Paton died in August 2020.
