More than 500,000 open-heart surgeries are performed in the United States every year. The anticoagulant Heparin is used to decrease the likelihood of thrombosis or hemorrhaging in each surgery by bonding to the enzyme inhibitor antithrombin III (AT-III). However, anesthesiologists currently lack the ability to measure antithrombin levels in a patient quickly, making appropriate Heparin dosages difficult to determine and possibly resulting in thrombosis or hemorrhaging if thrombin levels move outside the allowable range. This could be prevented with a simple bedside test. Current tests use gold, but we believe Iron (III) Oxide (commonly known as rust) can be used at a much lower price. Given a thrombin molecule with a fluorescein and quencher, the process to design and synthesize a test particle from Iron (III) Oxide coated in an aminosilane to detect AT-III levels was investigated.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/capstone/1011/thumbnail.jp
