wound
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Researchers create a fast-sealing surgical 'glue' for closing wounds
Closing up wounds typically calls for sutures or staples, but neither are able to create a complete seal. And when it comes to internal injuries that are harder to get to and wounds on organs that move a significant amount, such as lungs, treatment becomes even more difficult. Sealants offer a solution to those problems, but none of those available meet all of the requirements of an effective surgical tool. However, researchers have just developed a new type of sealant that may actually check all of the boxes. Their work was published this week in Science Translational Medicine.
A sponge-filled syringe could save you from bleeding out
RevMedx's sponge-filled syringe, the XSTAT 30, was approved for military use in treating gunshot wounds last year. Now, the FDA says paramedics and other first responders can use the device to treat civilian injuries as well. The syringe is filled with tiny sponges that are designed to control severe bleeding from wounds in places a tourniquet can't be used. Each syringe contains 92 compressed sponges that expand to fill the wound to block blood flow for up to four hours.
DARPA longs for magnetic body healers, crazy respawn camps
Even DARPA understands that its futuristic bubble shield can be penetrated given the right circumstances, and when it does, the soldier behind it is going to need some serious healing. In a hurry. In the entity's newest budget, there's $6.5 million tucked away "for the creation of a scaffold-free tissue engineering platform, which would allow the construction of large, complex tissues in vitro and in vivo." As you well know, this type of mad science has been around for quite some time, and now it looks as if DARPA is ready for the next best thing: "non-contact forces." Put simply, this alludes to replacing scaffolds with magnetic fields or dielectrophoresis, which could purportedly "control cell placement in a desired pattern for a sufficient period of time to allow the cells to synthesize their own scaffold." It's still too early to say how close we are to being able to instantaneously heal soldiers on the battlefield, but frankly, the public is apt to never know for sure.
