Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : [in Japanese]
Date : June 06, 2021 - June 08, 2021
In this paper, we propose a novel hydrogel swab for specimen sampling, which has a swab tip made of superabsorbent hydrogel and a detachable fiberscope to enable observation of the nasal cavity for a reliable sampling of a large amount of nasopharyngeal swab fluid. A hollow probe with a 0.64 mm diameter fiberscope inside was fabricated using a 3D printer. The bending stiffness of the probe was designed to be comparable to that of the commercial swab. The tip of the swab was fabricated using superabsorbent sodium polyacrylate and photo-crosslinkable water-soluble polyurethane. In a 10-second water-absorption experiment using a methylene blue solution, this swab provided about 2.5 times as much water as a commercial swab. The concentration of methylene blue solution released into the virus transport solution was 5.7 times higher than that of the commercial swab. From these results, we confirmed the effectiveness of the prepared swabs.
