Surgical care in zero gravity would be a challenge.

And biomedical engineering researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Louisville are preparing for this possibility.

They are developing surgical tools that could be used on spaceflights to the moon, an asteroid or Mars.

“In deep space, surgical procedures will be severely complicated by absence of gravity, where it becomes difficult to prevent cabin contamination from blood and body fluids,” said James Antaki, a professor of biomedical engineering at CMU.

Antaki, CMU researchers James E. Burgess and Jennifer A. Hayden, and George M. Pantalos, a professor of surgery and bioengineering at the University of Louisville, are developing a watertight surgery system to isolate the wound and control bleeding by creating a pressurized aqueous environment within the surgical field.