Here’s some Friday Medgadgety Fun: Take a browse through the bizarre collection of patents in Patently Silly. Their medicine section hasn’t been updated in a while, but that just means the new inventions in the pipeline are practical and sensible. Naturally.
Archives: 4/2006
Virginia Commonwealth University’s Pauley Heart Center has performed an implantation of the CardioWest temporary Total Artificial Heart, or TAH-t, a modern version of the Jarvik-7 Artificial Heart, the one that made headlines in the 1980s. One of only three hospitals in the nation certified to perform such a procedure, VCU’s center is reporting succcess with “the only total artificial heart approved by the FDA, Health Canada and Communité Europeenne.”
Syncardia Systems, Inc., a Tucson, Ariz. company responsible for this device, describes it:
The CardioWest™ TAH-t completely replaces the patient’s diseased heart and immediately restores normal blood pressure and cardiac output, facilitating recovery of end-organ function, such as the kidney and liver. As a result, patients become better candidates for transplantation…
The CardioWest™ TAH-t is a pneumatic, biventricular, implantable bridge-to-transplant system for full cardiac replacement, taking the place of the failing heart in patients at imminent risk of death. The device offers full circulatory support, the shortest blood path and exposure to artificial surfaces, and the highest level of cardiac output when compared with other artificial heart systems previously tested.
According to VCU’s press release, the system is capable of delivering as much as 9.5 liters/minute of cardiac output!
More at Syncardia Systems…
The press release from Virginia Commonwealth University…
Want to know about the current state of psychiatric research of clinical uses of LSD and hallucinogenic mu-shrooms? Head (or fly) to this article at the BBC.
American Society of Anesthesiologists’ March newsletter is packed with fascinating articles about battlefield anesthesiology written by military anesthesiologists. A totally worthy read.
Our favs:
Organization and Delivery of Combat Casualty Care
Trauma Care in Baghdad
Surgery on the High Seas
Military Humanitarian Medical Support
Military Anesthesiology: An Out-Of-The-Box Experience
Advances in Battlefield Pain Control
The entire newsletter…
The New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center has just announced that its clinicians are implementing a novel device called NESS H200™ to help status-post stroke patients do many everyday activities, “from opening a door to washing themselves.”
The device, manufactured by Bioness Inc. of Santa Clarita, Calif., was originally designed by Israeli-based NESS Ltd., which provides the following information about its technology:
Functional electrical stimulation (FES) is a medical technology using the application of low-level electrical impulses to various structures of the body. In rehabilitation, FES is primarily used for activating the neuromuscular system.
FES may be used for purely functional, or therapeutic purposes. Functional use implies the activation or enhancement of motion in a functional activity as a replacement for lost or impaired motor control. Using the Handmaster for grasping a cup for drinking is an example of the functional application of FES. Therapeutic use is directed towards lessening impairments, prevention of secondary complications, or halting progression of a disabling condition. Therapeutic FES includes strengthening muscles, lessening of spasticity, preventing muscle atrophy, and improving regional blood flow.
The NESS H200 (formerly The Handmaster) is a breakthrough development in the application of FES. It has simplified use of FES technology for both function, and therapeutic benefits, it also has allowed for combining the two indications as a neuroprosthesis and therapeutic modality.
The NESS H200 system is a portable, non-invasive, hand-wrist othosis (WHO) and open-loop neuroprosthesis utilizing microprocessor controlled stimulation.The spiral WHO has a self-adjusting fit, holds the wrist and hand in a functional posture, and provides gentle forearm compression. The stimulator generates five different modes of phased patterned stimulation, for exercise and functional activities. There is an array of electrodes, custom placed in the orthosis, to give reproducible placement over the motor points each time the system is used. The control of hand and wrist positioning allows for the generated movements to occur in isolation from the synergy movement patterns. The system is easily used in the home, with no technical expertise needed. It is non-invasive, and the patient is able to start using the system at home immediately following an initial setup and training session. The high tech design of the system does not carry the stigma of a ‘medical brace’, and has been readily accepted by patients of all ages.
To read more about the device, go to NESS website…
To see the system in action, the video is here…
Amy at DiabetesMine tipped us off to these convenient new medication devices, called “syringe buttons”:
This new-fangled gadget is a Russian invention from designers Vladislav Kropachev and Vladimir Makarov. It actually won a 2005 Design Innovation Award last November, but has received surprisingly little press.
What you do with it is place it on your skin and simply push down with your finger. This pierces a capsule inside the Syringe-button containing a dose of medicine, while simultaneously forcing the medicine through the needle and injecting it into the skin. You don’t even have to see the needle as it goes in.
These things can even “mimic pills” in the sense that they can be color-coded and the dosage can be printed on top, so users will be extra clear about the contents.
This is just the device to tide us over until inhaled insulin catches on. But its potential goes far beyond diabetes. And while Vladimir and Vladislav are clearly clever people, marketing may not be their strength. Clearly, a better name is possible.
Amy suggested “Prick Disks” — a great idea, but something tells me that won’t fly. And Pop-Secret is already taken. How about MediPress? Dispensables? Reverse Nipples? Or, since these look like UFO’s, how about Unnamable Syringe Object?
More from Membrana (in Russian!)
Cheri Robertson has no eyes, yet she is able to see – sort of.
She’s the recipient of a new bionic vision system. She lost both of her eyes in a car accident 19 years ago, but the system stimulates her brain electrically.
“I said, Oh my God, I can see it. I can see it,’ and I was just so excited!”
Neurosurgeon Kenneth Smith, M.D., of Saint Louis University School of Medicine, said the procedure is the first to reverse blindness in patients without eyes. “They are really seeing. The brain is getting impulses just like when you and I see.”
[Said Robertson:] “Whatever I see is just two splashes of light, so I know something is there,” Robertson says. She admits support from her mom and the local Lion’s Club keeps her spirits high. “If I was all depressed, I couldn’t affect anybody’s life for the good, and I want to make a difference.” Friends, family and doctors say she already has.
The surgery is not yet performed in the United States, but Dr. Smith said he hopes it will be in the next five years. The main safety concern is an infection where the port goes into the head. For the surgery to work, patients must have once had vision.
News 14 Carolina has a cool video and an interesting description/summary of the research related to the technology. The article seems to gloss over just how little this system is capable of at this point. When Smith’s comments that “They are really seeing. The brain is getting impulses just like when you and I see,” he’s really overstating the technology.
Still, Robertson’s attitude is incredible. She’s undergoing significant risk so that future generations can benefit from this development research that’s particularly difficult to perform in animal studies.
Flashbacks: Learning Retinal Implant System, Second Positive Results for Second Sight Implant
Last fall we noted that Purdue and Vanderbilt surgeons had developed a mass spectrometer for the OR. This classic device had been adapted for use in surgery, helping to determine the chemical composition of tissues on-the-fly — which help doctors diagnose and guide management, even while the patient’s still out on the table.
Last week we got a picture of the device — it’s the toaster-like object pictured at right. We also learned that it can be adapted to detect anything from urine abnormalities to explosives.
Today’s MIT Technology Review has a follow-up on the DESI Mass Spectrometer, and its implications for realtime OR decision-making:
Cooks and Caprioli can make a crude map of a tissue biopsy surface by performing a DESI reading at multiple spots, each about 500 micrometers in area. First, a hose sprays the tissue surface with a mist of charged solvent particles. The solvent picks up molecules from the surface, imparting them with an electrical charge, and is then sucked up by another hose into the vacuum chamber of a mass spectrometer, where it is analyzed.
“In the cases we’ve looked at, which include different grades of tumor, as well as tumor and nontumor regions, you have a very characteristic molecular fingerprint,” Cooks says.
During surgery, DESI could be used to create molecular profiles of tumors that would allow doctors to personalize their patients’ post-operative care. Caprioli believes mass spectrometry can play an important role in such personalized medicine. DESI can be used to perform rapid, extensive analyses of not only biopsies but also urine and blood samples and the surface of human skin, and it could detect molecular markers of diseases such as cancer much earlier on.
The article goes on to describe something called mass-spectrometry imaging, a new modality that, until now, hasn’t been tried in open air. It sounds like the DESI technique could eventually be refined to make a test as convenient as ultrasound, but as diagnostic as a pathologist’s slide. Amazing!
More from Purdue… and the NSF…
National Cancer Institute’s Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer has a fascinating review article on the current state of nanotechnology in oncological imaging, and the way it will change the future of diagnosing and treating cancer. From the article:
For Jeff Bulte, Ph.D., an associate professor of radiology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, there is little doubt how nanoparticle-enabled imaging can help cancer therapy. Working with Carl Figdor, Ph.D., and his colleagues at the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center in The Netherlands, Bulte has been testing the use of iron oxide nanoparticles to track how dendritic cells move through the body. Dendritic cells are candidates for triggering immune responses that would kill tumors, but for these cells to do their job they must first be injected into a patient’s lymph nodes. In fact, by labeling dendritic cells with magnetic nanoparticles and tracking them using MRI, the researchers found that interventional radiologists were successful only half the time at injecting these cells into lymph nodes and not into the surrounding tissues. “Now, with magnetic nanoparticles, we can use a widely available imaging method, MRI, to ensure that we’ve accurately delivered therapeutic cells to the exact spot where they can do their job,” says Bulte.
Then, there are the multifunctional nanodevices designed to be both imaging agent and anticancer drug. For example, James Baker Jr., M.D., director of the Michigan Nanotechnology Institute for Medicine and Biological Sciences and director of an NCI-funded Cancer Nanotechnology Platform Partnership team, has been heading a research effort aimed at developing tumor-targeting dendrimers that contain both imaging agent and therapeutic agent. In a recent paper, Baker’s team described its work with a dendrimer linked to a fluorescent imaging agent and paclitaxel, and showed that this agent can identify tumor cells and kill them simultaneously…
Read the whole thing…
