Tales Of Future Present:

Plunger Sucks the Fun Out of Injuries

According to an article in MITnews, a $3 device could improve the recovery from open wounds. The inventor is a mechanical engineering student, so there’s a good chance that she can quote Monty Python lines while making you feel mathematically inadequate.

The device uses suction for wound care. Apparently, when applied to a wound, negative pressure (like suction or a vacuum) improves recovery time. It’s still unclear as to why this happens, though. Not only does the suction itself help speed recovery, but the bandages covering the wounds don’t need to be changed as much, which might also aid in recovery.

Up until now, the cheapest negative-pressure unit costs $100 per day just to rent, and the batteries had to be charged every six hours. A device like that could be used in disaster areas that had regular power, but it doesn’t allow for the patient to move around very much, and had to be removed once power ran out. Dr. Robert Sheridan from Massachusetts General Hospital and a class of mechanical engineering students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology decided an improvement was in order. They made a device that used no electrical power and could be left on a bandage for days.

One of the students, Danielle Zurovcik, decided to continue work on the device after the semester ended, and made it the focus of her master’s thesis. She field-tested 50 prototypes of the plastic device in Haiti, just after the earthquakes. Even though long-term study wasn’t possible, Zurovcik said that the team was “able to verify that negative-pressure therapy was being applied and the healing process was underway.” She plans on further tests for the new pocket-sized version in Rwanda, where clinics regularly don’t have power at all.

The device is basically a plastic container that collapses, accordion-style, with thin tubes that run to the bandage. The container is collapsed, the tubes are connected to the underside of the bandage, and the container is released. As the container tries to expand back to its original shape, it sucks air out of the bandage area, which creates the negative pressure. The bandage obviously needs to be air-tight, since any air leak would make the device useless. Production cost is only $3 per device, and to answer the question on everyone’s mind, yes, it looks like it is very possible to give yourself hickeys with this thing. No more lugging out the Shop Vac to fool your friends into thinking your last date went well! Of course, this suction device, combined with last week’s vagina scent, would be a pervert’s perfect evening.

Honestly, though, this device looks like a cheap plastic doodad that you get with a kid’s meal from a fast-food joint. Which is a good thing, I guess. McDonald’s burger joints in third-world countries could give these away and not only increase their local popularity, but also qualify as a medical clinic. “The doctor prescribes 50 cc’s of Big Mac, stat! Would you like fries with that?”