surgery
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Surgical robot could sew you up better than a doctor
Surgical teams aren't fond of robots that could replace them (just ask Johnson & Johnson), but that doesn't mean they're completely against mechanical helpers. Children's National Medical Center and Johns Hopkins University recently tested a Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot (STAR) arm during experimental bowel surgery on anesthetized pigs. The machine only handled suturing by itself, but excelled at that job -- it sewed more consistently than veteran doctors and even other robotic assistants. Its edge comes from using a depth-savvy light field camera to find fluorescent markers placed inside the tissue, helping it spot folds that would normally stay hidden.
High-tech scalpel makes brain surgery less risky
The "smart scalpel" developed by a researcher named David Oliva Uribe in Brussels, Belgium doesn't look or even work like a conventional scalpel. It has no edge, has a sensor-rich sphere at the tip, and instead of having the capability to cut people open, it can differentiate between cancerous tumors and normal brain tissue. A surgeon simply has to swipe it across the brain's surface to get a visual or an auditory result about the tissue's status in half a second. The tool's especially useful when locating early stage tumors, which still look similar to healthy tissue.
ICYMI: VR real-life surgery, drone impact study and more
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-436615{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-436615, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-436615{width:570px;display:block;} try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-436615").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: Royal London Hospital and VR company Medical Realities made the first VR surgical training video while performing an operation on a real person. Meanwhile the pain of getting hit by a drone's propeller is being studied in Denmark. We're also showcasing a wearable for stress relief that reminds you to do some deep breathing or meditation. Definitely make sure you read about the web master who deleted thousands of websites accidentally (poor guy) and the UC Davis blunder of trying to cover up the Pepper Spray Cop. As always, please share any great tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
Watching surgery in VR isn't for the faint of heart
Next month, my mom will retire as a theater nurse. For almost 40 years she's been walking into her hospital on a near daily basis, donning a fresh pair of scrubs and helping a surgical team save people's lives. I couldn't be prouder. But truth be told, I know little about her job and what actually happens when someone is wheeled inside the operating theater. In my head, it's just a nightmarish blur of sedatives, scalpels and face masks.
Watch the first live VR surgery stream on April 14th
Virtual reality has already been used to assist with surgery, and now it's giving you a chance to see that surgery as it happens. Medical Realities says it'll host the first live VR stream of surgery on April 14th, using a 360-degree camera to show the entire operating table. You'll only need the company's app and Google Cardboard (or a viable alternative) to tune in. The surgery isn't particularly risky (it's a fairly standard tumor removal), but the company is aware of the dangers -- the feed is delayed by a minute in case something goes awry.
ICYMI: Brightest X-ray laser, 3D printing cartilage and more
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-741239{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-741239, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-741239{width:570px;display:block;} try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-741239").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: Stanford's National Accelerator Laboratory is upgrading a laser beam to make it the brightest X-ray laser in the world, enabling all sorts of as-yet unseen science. Popular Chinese phone maker Xiaomi makes a ceramic-backed phone that appears to be near indestructible. And medical researchers are using patient-derived, stem-cell cartilage to repair joints by 3D-drawing them when doing surgery, rather than harvest existing cartilage from elsewhere on the body. We'd also like to share this video of the cutest little BB-8 cosplay artist. As always, please share any great tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
'Biopen' lets doctors 3D print cartilage during surgery
If you need knee replacement surgery in the future, doctors may be able to create a custom-made joint from your own stem cells. A team from St Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne, have developed the Biopen, a type of 3D printer that uses "ink" made from hydrogel and stem cells. While 3D printing stem cells isn't new, the exact shape of a patient's cartilage often can't be known until they're cut open. Using the device, surgeons can precisely customize the joint to the patient with surgical "scaffolds," then permanently harden the biogel using ultraviolet light.
Researchers develop a polymer sponge to repair broken backs
Researchers at the Mayo Clinic have developed a novel spinal graft that automatically "grows" to the requisite size and shape when implanted. The spongy polymer isn't meant to be a formal replacement like the 3D printed neck bones recently installed by a team from the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney. Instead, it's designed to act as a bone graft -- a biodegradable scaffold through which a cancer patient's own bones can regrow after surgery.
The first uterus transplant in the US has failed
Medical progress sometimes doesn't go according to plan. Cleveland Clinic has announced that the first US uterus transplant failed just two weeks after doctors put it in. Details of what went wrong are scarce, but the Clinic says that a "sudden complication" forced the removal. While the 26-year-old patient (referred to only as Lindsey) is recovering well, it's clear that such a groundbreaking procedure isn't easy. Not that the Clinic is giving up -- it's continuing with a transplant study that should include 10 women, and hopes that this transplant will eventually give more women a chance at childbirth.
Cleveland Clinic performs first uterus transplant in the US
Doctors in Cleveland have performed the first successful uterus transplant in the United States. But, once the 26 year-old recipient has one or two babies, the womb will be removed so she can stop taking medications that prevent her body from rejecting the foreign organ -- a very real risk that's haunted the procedure in the past. Her previously impossible pregnancy will rely on in vitro fertilization, using her eggs (harvested prior to the transplant) that've been fertilized with her husband's sperm and then frozen, according to The New York Times.
Patient wears VR headset to map brain during surgery
Virtual reality is becoming increasingly useful when it comes to the medical field, and doctors in France have taken notice. At Angers University Hospital in western France, physicians used a VR headset to map a patient's brain during surgery to remove a tumor late last month. The patient was conscious during the procedure (a common practice) in which doctors used a virtual environment to map zones of the brain. Until now, said mapping and monitoring neural connections in certain areas weren't easily achieved in the operating room.
Doctors will use 3D modeling ahead of your next sinus surgery
Given the sinus' close proximity to your eyes and brain -- not to mention the area's super-sensitive nature -- the single slip of a surgeon's scalpel can have debilitating and permanent repercussions. That's why researchers at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center have developed a 3D-modelling technique that maps out each patient's sinus cavity prior to their surgery. By doing so, doctors will be able to practice the upcoming procedure as well as see exactly what sort of effect it will have on the patient.
Doctors use Google Cardboard to explore a heart, save a life
Four-month-old Teegan Lexcen was born in Minnesota with a small, malformed heart, no left lung, and the faintest chance of seeing her first Christmas. Now she's recovering after open-heart surgery at Nicklaus Children's Hospital in Miami, Florida, where a team of enterprising doctors used a smartphone and Google's Cardboard VR headset to peer into her chest and save her life.
America's first penile transplants will be for war veterans
Arms and legs aren't the only appendages that American servicemen lose to IEDs but, thanks to a pioneering surgical technique, injured soldiers will soon have the option of replacing their war-damaged wedding tackle. A team of surgeons from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine announced on Sunday that within a year (more likely, just a few months) their facility will begin performing penis transplants. American veterans will be their first patients.
3D-printed vascular systems help doctors practice for your surgery
It's safe to say that you want your doctors to know exactly what they're doing when performing surgery. But how do they train for a vascular operation, which is both extremely tricky and unique to your anatomy? By using 3D printing, that's how. MakerBot's parent company Stratasys is teaming with physicians to create 3D-printed replicas of patients' vascular systems, giving surgeons a way to practice before they poke around your blood vessels. The models use flexible photopolymers (that is, light-sensitive polymers) to recreate the feel of organic tissue, so you don't have to worry that the surgery team is only used to working with hardened plastic.
Doctors can now grow human vocal cords in a lab
Used to be that if you damaged your vocal cords and needed a new set, doctors would have to shoot you full of immunosuppressants to keep your body from rejecting the cadaver-sourced replacements. Not anymore. Researchers at University of Wisconsin Medical School have published a preliminary study in the journal Science Translational Medicine wherein they successfully cultured 170 sets of vocal cords in the lab. These organs do not require the course of immunosuppressants that conventional transplants require. "We never imagined that we would see the impressive level of function that we did," study senior author Nathan Welham told Buzzfeed.
Pop-up sensor would give robot surgeons a sense of touch
Robotic surgery is no longer the stuff of science fiction. However, these robots can't really feel their way around -- the need for super-small mechanisms rules out existing approaches to touch. That's where Harvard researchers might come to save the day. They've developed a pop-up sensor whose four layers collapse to a tiny footprint (just a tenth of an inch) when necessary, but expand into a 3D sensor thanks to a built-in spring. The design is extremely sensitive, too, with a light intensity sensor that can detected mere millinewtons of force.
Hollywood FX artists help doctors practice child surgery
Boston Children's Hospital has formed an odd partnership with a practical special effects company to create more realistic surgery simulator models. Santa Monica-based Fractured FX is well acquainted with human anatomy (and gore), having worked on FX's bloody American Horror Story. It also helped recreate surgeries performed in the early 1900s on the Cinemax Series The Knick. For its part, Boston Children's Hospital has had a surgery simulator program for quite awhile, but decided it needed to up the realism quotient and give doctors a better "haptic" feel for patient's organs.
Doctor dubbed 'the father of cyborgs' tested implants in his own brain
How far would you go to create a brain-controlled speech decoder? Doctor Philip Kennedy already helped blaze a trail in brain-computer interfaces back in the 80s. Now, a report in MIT Technology Review explains how the neurosurgeon decided to crank his research up a notch. Well, several notches, really, by having implants put into his own brain to better learn how neurons function with speech. What's more, Kennedy paid $25,000 and underwent highly invasive surgery -- including the removal of the top of his skull -- for the privilege.
UV-light enabled catheter fixes heart defects without surgery
Advances in medicine are treating patients in ways that were never thought possible. The latest breakthrough comes from a team of scientists in Boston who have developed a way to fix holes in the heart without the need for invasive surgery. They created a ground-breaking catheter, biodegradable glue and patch that fit inside the patient's veins and are guided directly into the heart. Once there, it uses a reflective balloon and UV light to apply the patch and activate its adhesive coating.
