To define how the world should look, neural networks are making up their own rules
Researchers demonstrate how deep learning could eventually replace traditional anesthetic practices.
Academics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Massachusetts General Hospital have demonstrated how neural networks can be trained to administer anesthetic during surgery.
Over the past decade, machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI), and deep learning algorithms have been developed and applied to a range of sectors and applications, including in the medical field.
Doctors have placed humans in suspended animation for the first time, as part of a trial in the US that aims to make it possible to fix traumatic injuries that would otherwise cause death.
Samuel Tisherman, at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, told New Scientist that his team of medics had placed at least one patient in suspended animation, calling it “a little surreal” when they first did it. He wouldn’t reveal how many people had survived as a result.
The technique, officially called emergency preservation and resuscitation (EPR), is being carried out on people who arrive at the University of Maryland Medical Centre in Baltimore with an acute trauma – such as a gunshot or stab wound – and have had a cardiac arrest. Their heart will have stopped beating and they will have lost more than half their blood. There are only minutes to operate, with a less than 5 per cent chance that they would normally survive.
From modeling to printing, it’s all about seeing inside someone’s head.
Face transplants are an ideal setting to fuse medicine with the growing world of 3D printing and imaging. The left image is a rendering of what face transplant recipient Cameron Underwood’s face looked like before his surgery; the right is a planned rendering based on the donor’s face.
Cameron Underwood received a new face on January 6, 2018. By the time his surgery ended, everything below Underwood’s eye sockets had been replaced with the face of organ donor William Fisher.
A face transplant is exactly what it sounds like—replacing the disfigured face of one person with the whole, undamaged face of a very recently deceased person. Eduardo Rodriguez, plastic surgeon and face transplant specialist at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York who performed surgery on Underwood, insists this surgery is a way to give these patients “a second chance at life.” Without a new face, patients like Underwood have great difficulty speaking, swallowing, eating, expressing themselves, as well as all the other things we do with our faces that we never think twice about.
A physician in France performed the first successful face transplant surgery in 2005. Since then, only 40 other such surgeries have been done around the world. Rodriguez has performed three of those surgeries, including Underwood’s.
September 20, 2017 – Israel based, AUGmedics is the inventor of an augmented reality technology designed to enhance the performance of surgeons doing spinal operations. Called ViZOR, the application provides a heads-up display that enhances a surgeon’s perception. ViZOR gives the wearer a 3D spinal projection that goes below the skin by using the information of the patient’s CT scan.
Between 2000 and 2013, robotic surgeons were involved in the deaths of 144 people, according to records kept by the FDA. There are some forms of robotic surgery that are much riskier than others: the death rate for head, neck, and cardiothoracic surgery is almost 10 times higher than for other forms of surgery.
Wearables may improve clinical outcomes in the OR.
Healthcare is one of the ripest markets for Google Glass and Glass-based apps. While patient care has become increasingly data-driven, doctors need a way to receive the data while remaining hands-on with patients. (Video)
The less invasive a surgical procedure is, the better. Less invasive surgeries reduce patient discomfort, foster faster recoveries, and limit the risk of infection. Problem is, you have to get your eyes on a problem to solve it.
Patching up holes in blood vessels and the heart’s walls may become easier with blood-resistant glue.
You’re operating on a heart and it’s got a tear in it. How do you mend it? The traditional answers are with sutures or staples, but they aren’t good ones. Both involve piercing tissue and creating holes, which is bad news for an organ that’s constantly moving, and vigorously pumping blood. Holes lead to clots. They also bleed.
Xiao Wei recovers in hospital after the amazing surgical procedure.
Surgeons in China have reportedly saved a man’s severed hand by attaching it to his ankle. The amazing surgical procedure was required after Xiao Wei lost his right hand in an industrial accident in November.
What if you need a hysterectomy, and the surgeon wants to do the surgery with a robot? Instead of working directly with his hands, he will sit at a console manipulating a set of robotic arms outfitted with tiny surgical instruments.
At Eastern Maine Medical Center, Dr. Rafael Grossmann recently performed his first Google surgery with Google Glass in tow. It may be the first such Google Glass-equipped surgery in the device’s history – complete with a corresponding Google Glass Hangout (which wasn’t open to the public, for those looking to tune in to a live surgery when the thrill of a YouTube video just isn’t enough anymore).
