Owen Smith

owenmitchellsmith2@gmail.com

Class of 2021

In the podiatry field of medicine there is an increasingly growing number of people that are complaining about how long scalpel incisions of the foot take to heal because it restricts the amount of movement they are allowed to be doing.

The potential use of obsidian scalpels could not only shorten the wait of the plantar skin to heal it would also leave behind less of the unwanted and undesirable scarring tissue that is typically left behind. This would allow for a more efficient way to remove Plantar warts.

Based on the past research and data, my hypothesis was obsidian scalpels would be more efficient when cutting plantar skin.

1.Call local doctors offices to find a sterile environment to perform the testing in. 2.Order obsidian scalpels and stainless steel scalpels (15’s)-5 of each 3.Call local butcher shops to find pigskin for the testing. 4.Pick up pigskin within 24 hours of testing and refrigerate in order to keep fresh. 5.Sanitize testing space and materials. 6.Measure thickness of pigskin using a ruler and record (should be consistent across all trials) 7.Equal out scale and place a 1in x 1in square of pigskin onto scale. 8.Use the obsidian scalpel to cut the pigskin with 15 lb of pressure- cut should be vertical and should be spaced 0.5 an inch in length. 9.Place the ruler inside the cut, measure the depth of the cut in millimeters and record. 10.Place cut piece of pigskin into disposal bag 11.Repeat steps 5-10 for each blade.12. Dispose of pigskin and scalpels.13. Analyze the data.

-The use of pigskin rather than actual plantar skin.

- There may have been mistakes in measuring the amount of pressure being applied.

-There was limited access to certain brands of scalpels.

After all of my experimenting all of the evidence shows that stainless steels scalpels are more effective. This is because by the end of all of the trails the obsidian scalpels ended up breaking while the stainless steel scalpels remained being able to do their job effectively.

It is now clear that when operating on Plantar skin there should be no use of obsidian scalpels.

My hypothesis was incorrect, the obsidian scalpels were not more effective when operating on plantar skin than the stainless steel scalpels.

- Discovering if other scalpel materials other than obsidian are more effective on plantar skin.

- Finding out if obsidian blades are more effective on other parts of the body that haven't been studied yet

-"Surgeons Use  Stone Age Technology for Delicate Surgery", by Doctor Lee A. Green.

-"How Stone Age Blades Are Still Cutting It in Modern Surgery", by Dr. Vinay Kumar.

-"A study conducted on rats", by Doctors, Disa, Vossoughi, and Goldberg