A simple technique that involves squeezing the arm three times before surgery could speed up recovery from heart bypass operations and even improve patients’ long-term survival. Using the same type of blood pressure device found in GPs’ surgeries, doctors squeeze the upper arm three times, for five minutes at a time, restricting blood flow to the heart.
Continue reading… “Give Your Arm A Squeeze To Boost Your Heart”
A miniature ‘egg whisk’ pump has been pioneered by a British doctor to help the heart pump blood round the body during life-saving surgery. The pump, which rotates faster than a high-speed food blender, allows patients with weak hearts to have an artery unblocked without the risk of kidney failure or cardiac arrest.
Continue reading… “Miniature ‘Egg Whisk’ Pump Allows At-Risk Patients To Have Heart Surgery”
Sharron Kay Thornton talks with her lead surgeon Victor Perez who restored sight to her left eye.
Doctors in Miami announced Wednesday that they had performed a vision-restoring surgery that used the 60-year-old patient’s tooth.The surgery, the first in the USA, was performed Labor Day weekend at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. Afterward, patient Sharron Thornton was able to see for the first time in nine years. “Sharron was able to see 20/60 this morning. She was seeing only shadows a couple of weeks ago,” says ophthalmologist and surgeon Victor Perez.
Continue reading… “Vision-Restoring Surgery That Used Patient’s Tooth Performed In U.S.”
New hope for blindness
A surgeon who pioneered laser eye surgery to cure short-sightedness has announced a new technique which could prevent millions of older people from going blind.
Continue reading… “New Treatment Could Prevent Blindness In Older People”
The point of Shila Renee Mullins’s brain surgery was to remove a malignant tumor threatening to paralyze her left side. But Methodist University Hospital in Memphis also saw an opportunity to promote the hospital to prospective patients.
Continue reading… “Webcasting Surgeries To Promote Hospitals To Prospective Patients”
Scientists who studied 683 lung cancer patients found that women tended to be younger than men when they developed the disease, despite, on average, smoking much less than men.
Continue reading… “Women More Vulnerable To Smoking-Induced Cancers Than Men”
Lung transplant offers hope of a longer life for patients with end-stage respiratory diseases such as emphysema and cystic fibrosis, with some surviving for years following surgery. But due to chronic shortages of viable organs for transplant, only about 25 percent of patients on waiting lists receive new lungs. However, a new out-of-body lung-repair technique developed at the Toronto General Hospital may dramatically increase the number of lungs that can be used in transplants and improve surgical outcome.
Continue reading… “Repairing Lungs Outside The Body”
Luckily for us, the Australian performance artist known as Stelarc, formerly Stelios Arcadiou, is not prone to sensationalism. He only wants to transform his body into a portal on the internet. Which is why visitors to Exit Art, a gallery in Midtown Manhattan, are being treated to a video of Stelarc’s left arm being cut up like a rare tenderloin to implant what will eventually be a Bluetooth-enabled artificial ear.
Continue reading… “Artist Stelarc’s Extra Ear Project At The Exit Art Gallery”
Surprise!
Surgeons in Russia’s Urals Region were staggered to find a 5-centimeter high spruce growing inside a man’s lung.
The discovery was made while Artyom Sidorkin, 28, from the Urals city of Izhevsk, was undergoing surgery.
Sidorkin had complained of extreme pain in his chest and had been coughing up blood, doctors suspected cancer.
“I blinked three times and thought I was seeing things,” Izhevsk surgeon Vladimir Kamashev said.
Continue reading… “Russian Doctors Find Tree Growing in Man’s Lung”
Microchips in pills could soon allow doctors to find out whether a patient has taken their medication.
Continue reading… “Microchip In Pills That Tells The Doctor You’ve Taken Your Meds”
Developed by Elumotion and the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, the BERTI robot, recently on display at London’s Science Museum, was specifically created to mimic human gestures. The “gesture bot” was designed to use human gestures to compliment verbal communication with humans.
Continue reading… “The BERTI Robot Mimics Human Gestures”
A STEM cell therapy offering “natural” breast enlargement is to be made available to British women for the first time.
The treatment could boost cup size while reducing stomach fat. It involves extracting stem cells from spare fat on the stomach or thighs and growing them in a woman’s breasts. An increase of one cup size is likely, with the potential for larger gains as the technique improves.
Continue reading… “Stem Cell Therapy To Grow Bigger Breasts”
