medical instruments

Medical instruments

Artificial heart (19)
Artificial joint (8)
Artificial skin (42)
Catheter (116)
Endoscope (33)
Hearing aid (42)
Hemostat (13)
Medical instrument (8)
Operating table (6)
Pacemaker (46)
Prosthesis (99)
Stethoscope (6)
Surgical instrument (9)
Syringe (81)
Wheelchair (33)

The tiny device is already within the range of generating enough electricity to power a pacemaker on its own,

These results, the team concluded, demonstrate that their system could power implants like pacemakers with

For example, the end-of-line production defect rate for the tiny catheters (flexible tubes) used for treating patients with cardiovascular disease is as high as 80%.

%The greater accuracy during manufacturing paves the way for the production of even smaller catheters to tackle blood-flow problems in harder-to-reach places of the body.

and even personal transportation vehicles such as electric wheelchairs. he system will be developed further to easier integrate with many more systems and programs,

whereas our pieces weigh. 06 grams it would be akin to injecting insulin with a horse syringe,

milling, lathing or fashioning it into parts and tools for different uses from car panels to precision medical instruments to moving parts in a paintball gun.

The system itself includes an external component (an ear hook similar to traditional hearing aids) and an implant

because when platelets grab onto the surfaces of catheters and medical implants they tend to form clots a major problem for patient care.

#Simple alerts can cut infections from catheters University of Pennsylvania rightoriginal Studyposted by Lee-Ann Landis Donegan-Penn on August 26 2014simpler automatic alerts in electronic health

records can cut the number of urinary tract infections in patients with urinary catheters report researchers. The alerts help physicians decide

whether their patients need urinary catheters in the first place and then alert them to reassess the need for catheters that have not been removed within a recommended time period.

Approximately 75 percent of urinary tract infections acquired in the hospital are associated with a urinary catheterâ##a tube inserted into the bladder through the urethra to drain urine.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 15 to 25 percent of hospitalized patients receive urinary catheters during their hospital stay.

As many as 70 percent of urinary tract infections in these patients may be preventable using infection control measures such as removing no longer needed catheters resulting in up to 380000 fewer infections and 9000 fewer deaths each year.##

##First electronic alerts do result in fewer catheter-associated urinary tract infections. Second the design of the alerts is very important.

By making the alert quicker and easier to use we saw a dramatic increase in the number of catheters removed in patients who no longer needed them.##

##Fewer catheters means fewer infections fewer days in the hospital and even fewer deaths. Not to mention the dollars saved by the health system in general.##

##In the first phase of the study two percent of urinary catheters were removed after an initial##off-the-shelf##electronic alert was triggered (the stock alert was part of the standard software package for the electronic health record.

and used a simplified alert based on national guidelines for removing urinary catheters they had published previously with the CDC.

Following introduction of the simplified alert the proportion of catheter removals increased more than sevenfold to 15 percent.

The study also found that catheter associated urinary tract infections decreased from an initial rate of. 84 per 1000 patient days to. 70 per 1000 patient-days following implementation of the first alert and. 50 per 1000

Among other improvements the simplified alert required two mouse clicks to submit a remove-urinary-catheter order compared to seven mouse clicks required by the original alert.

In patients electronic health records physicians were prompted to specify the reason (among ten options) for inserting a urinary catheter.

On the basis of the reason selected they were alerted subsequently to reassess the need for the catheter

Women s health units had the highest proportion of alerts that led to a remove-urinary-catheter order

and passed through a syringe. The electric charge on the substance surface causes it to form a long string from the syringe,

where it whips aroundr spinsefore collecting on an electrically grounded surface. A palm-sized swatch of the fabric takes about five minutes to make.

#Tiny fly ear seesaw could boost hearing aids Engineers have developed a tiny, low-power device that mimics a fly ultra-sensitive hearing.

The advance could lead to hypersensitive hearing aids. The new device could be used to build the next generation of hearing aids with intelligent microphones that adaptively focus only on those conversations

or sounds that are of interest to the wearer. The researchers drew inspiration for the device from the yellow-colored Ormia ochracea fly.

andriux-uk/Flickr) ecause hearing aids rely on batteries, minimizing power consumption is a critical consideration in moving hearing-aid device technology forward,

Currently, only two percent of Americans wear hearing aids, but as much as ten percent of the population could benefit from wearing one,

In addition to possibly improving hearing aids, the device could have military and defense applications as well. In dark environments, for instance, where visual cues are not available

Researchers say the new optical approach is ideal for children and for patients with electronic implants, such as pacemakers, cochlear implants,

such as pulling the clot out mechanically via a catheter threaded from the groin area or by directly injecting tpa into the brain.

#Wireless pacemaker is much smaller than a penny Engineers have built an electronic pacemaker that smaller than a grain of rice

and used it to power a tiny pacemaker in a rabbit. Theye preparing the system for testing in humans.

#Microchip could detect infection in artificial joints A tiny microchip could improve postoperative care for patients with knee replacements

One in 100 Americans has an artificial joint, Star says, nd bacterial infections are a common complication of the implant.

offers two ways that solar steam can be used for sterilizationne setup to clean medical instruments and another to sanitize human waste. anitation

#Freedom Driver allows man with artificial heart to await transplant at home Heart failure patients awaiting organ transplants normally find themselves anchored to the hospital bed by a washing machine-sized device that keeps blood pumping through their veins.

What drives power to Larkin's artificial heart and others like it is a machine that delivers compressed air into the ventricles via two tubes.

#A half-cow, half-electronic artificial heart has saved this Frenchman In France, A 75-year-old man has just been given the gift of life as a team of surgeons have completed successfully the transplant of the world s first true artificial heart.##

##The patient, so far unnamed, is reportedly recovering at Georges Pompidou European Hospital in Paris,

##Most other artificial hearts, by contrast, beat at a constant unchanging rate. This means that patients either have to avoid too much activity,

Patients who receive artificial heart transplants usually take anticoagulation medication to minimize such risks. Carmat artificial heart mimics the dual chamber pumping action of a real human heart.

The technology, which took 25 years to develop, started taking shape after the surgeon initially tested the feasibility of developing artificial heart valves using chemically-treated animal tissues as an alternative to plastic.

Since then he has obtained approval from authorities in France, Belgium, Poland, Slovenia and Saudi arabia to conduct human trials that are expected to run until the end of 2014.

Ultimately, the litmus test hinges on whether the artificial heart s pumps last more than a few years.

The#Syncardia#total artificial heart which remains the only FDA-approved heart replacement option, has made it

The artificial heart features sensors to monitor and adjust blood flow depending on the body s demands.

The idea was to develop an artificial heart in which the moving parts that are in contact with blood are made of tissue that is better suited for the biological environment,

The Carmat artificial heart is expected to cost about 140,000 to 180,000 Euros (or $191, 000 to $246, 000.

The edible battery could also be used in medical devices like pacemakers and#implants#that treat Alzheimers and other brain conditions.

sending a signal to pumps carried by the user to administer the required dose via a catheter.

since researchers are limited currently at being able to predict a pacemaker effect on a patient before surgery, for example.

Theye more like industrial fabrication machines with syringes. Users load the syringes with raw food ink dough chocolate

or anything with a liquid consistency and the machine prints the food by depositing layers of liquids to build the desired object.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Thursday approved the first retinal implant for use in the United states. The FDA s green light for Second sight s Argus II Retinal Prosthesis

a video processing unit and a 60-electrode implanted retinal prosthesis that replaces the function of degenerated cells in the retina,

using the video processing unit to transform images from the video camera into electronic data that is wirelessly transmitted to the retinal prosthesis.

Other retinal prosthesis are powered by inductive coils that, along with other components, must be implanted surgically in the patient s head.

or wheelchairs with their thoughts. The mental remote control, developed by Braingate, will be tested in volunteers possibly within a year.

then used to steer a wheelchair or direct a robotic arm. The Braingate team also won the $1-million B. R. A i. N. Prize at Braintech Israel 2013.

receiving pacemaker implants in his chest that could intercept aberrant signals from his brain before they reached his muscles.

because it requires implanting a catheter in the patient for 12 weeks which is difficult for the patients to tolerate.

which causes painful and frequent urination that can interrupt daily life currently requires infusing the drug lidocaine into a patient bladder through a catheter.

the tube could be straightened to fit into a catheter and spring back into its pretzel shape in the bladder,

This structure is threaded into a catheter, and inserted into the bladder. When expelled from the catheter,

the device returns to a pretzel shape and floats freely. The researchers found that the pretzel shape still used in today devices was critical for retention in the bladder,

Tilting toward a fieldin experiments the team piped a water solution through a syringe and onto the microhair array.

Initially developed by Herr s research group Biom s prosthesis dubbed the Biom T2 System simulates a biological ankle

When fitting the prosthesis to patients prosthetists can program appropriate stiffness and power throughout all the stages of a gait using software created by Herr s group a process the company calls Personal Bionic Tuning.

and drastically lowers the time required to acclimate to the prosthesis (which can take weeks or months with conventional models).

and engineering research that ultimately led to today s Biom prosthesis was conducted by Herr s research group within the MIT Media Lab

to a traditional prosthesis for the first time. It was as profound as when you re walking through the airport

which uses a high-powered syringe to rapidly discharge the material into a vein. This approach delivers material successfully to liver cells

and power source that looks like an oversized hearing aid around the patient ear. Researchers at MIT Microsystems Technology Laboratory (MTL), together with physicians from Harvard Medical school and the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary (MEEI

The application of polysb to catheters yields a significant reduction in the buildup of protein, mammalian cells,

and microbes on a device surface, compared with unmodified catheters. This has potential to reduce blood clots and infection

is designed specifically for venous catheters and recently earned clearance from the Food and Drug Administration as a medical device deemed safe and effective for commercial distribution in the United states. It also recently received designation as a product meeting European union standards of health, safety,

In the Science Translation Medicine paper, the cofounders exposed polysb-modified catheters to blood for 60 days.

In vitro, the modified catheters on both their external and internal surfaces saw a 98 percent reduction in the accumulation of platelets and three types of white blood cells.

In vivo, the modified catheters showed a 99 percent reduction in thrombus accumulation, 50 percent less inflammation,

Consider the thousands of people living today with pacemakers, he says. acemakers are delivering an electrical signal,

The researchers designed a wearable artificial skin made out of tiny domes that interlock and deform when poked

Gaharwar envisions the biomaterial being preloaded into syringes that soldiers can carry with them into combat situations.

"Our material's combination of injectability, rapid mechanical recovery, physiological stability and the ability to promote coagulation result in a hemostat for treating incompressible wounds in out-of-hospital, emergency situations,

Obviously such vehicles must be small enough to be injected into the eyeball for example with a syringe.

said he envisions a stethoscope-like device that a doctor would press across a patient's chest to image the buried palpable structure.

whether as artificial skin or electronic paper. Making such concepts affordable enough for general use remains a challenge

We call them flying syringes she says. Sampling the viruses they carry could enable her to detect a pathogen early.

The Dextrus hand connects directly to an NHS fitted passive prosthesis. This means no additional custom fitting and no extra cost.

I believe this development will open up a wide range of new applications from health monitoring systems wearable medical instruments

Other applications include home automation surveillance medical instruments prosthetic devices and smart clothing. The artificial compound eye features a panoramic hemispherical field of view with a resolution identical to that of the fruitfly in less than 1 mm thickness.

patients injured in last month's quake were being wheeled out in wheelchairs. People could be seen frantically calling their families as medical attendants rushed to set up tents in the parking lot.

Hansen Medical in Mountain view, Calif.,has the Magellan catheter a thin device for exploring the human body without damaging tissue.

for example, the intelligent prosthesis will make adjustments and increase precision on its own until no error messages are generated

for example, the artificial joints may eventually Break in addition, orthopedic surgeons currently have no suitable method for precisely measuring leg length before the operation

The new system was developed within the"artificial joints"cooperative network which is funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWI) and coordinated by Fraunhofer IWU.

#Automated captioning system processes hundreds of video-hours per day In 2008, four students at the MIT Sloan School of management developed a system for captioning online video that was far more efficient than traditional methods,

and delivered through the esophagus with the assistance of an endoscope. These devices remained in the stomach for up to five days, after

#A Light-Reflecting Balloon Catheter Repairs the Heart without Surgery Harvard-affiliated researchers have designed a specialized catheter for fixing holes in the heart by using a biodegradable adhesive and patch.

The team reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine that the catheter has been used successfully in animal studies to help close holes without requiring open-heart surgery.

Their catheter device utilizes UV-light technology and can be used to place the patch in a beating heart.

The catheter is inserted through a vein in the neck or groin and directed to the defect within the heart.

Once the catheter is in place, the clinician opens two positioning balloons: one around the front end of the catheter, passing through the hole,

and one on the other side of the heart wall. The clinician then deploys the patch and turns on the catheter UV light.

The light reflects off of the balloon shiny interior and activates the patch adhesive coating.

and the catheter is withdrawn. Over time, normal tissue growth resumes, and heart tissue grows over the patch.

#UV light-enabled catheter to fix holes in heart without operation WASHINGTON: Researchers have designed a specialised catheter for fixing holes in the heart using a biodegradable adhesive

and patch, eliminating the need for open heart surgery. Pedro delnido, contributing author on the study, said,

Their newly designed catheter device utilises UV light technology, and can be used to place the patch in a beating heart.

The catheter is inserted through a vein in the neck or groin and directed to the defect within the heart.

one around the front end of the catheter, and one on the other side of the heart wall.

The clinician then deploys the patch and turns on the catheter's UV light. The light reflects off of the balloon's interior

#Two-step therapy for breast tumour shows promise Disabling a cancer-causing pathway and administering an immune-molecule-based'mop-up'therapy can eradicate a type of breast tumour in mice,

The Duke university scientists have said already it could be applied to hearing aids and other acoustic imaging and sensing applications,

the approved 3d printed hip joint prosthesis was developed by Dr. Zhang Ke, Liu Zhong Jun, and Cai Hong of Peking University Third Hospital in cooperation with AK Medical, a Chinese private medical company.

Depending on the domestic or imported artificial joints used, an operation costs about 50,000-100,000 RMB, something many families cannot afford.

A domestically-made traditional prosthesis is often not satisfactory. The imported hip alone quickly costs around 30

The hip prosthesis is composed of four parts: a ceramic femoral head, a femoral stem, an acetabular cup,

we did not see the loosening of prosthesis, displacement and failure conditions yet, Cai Hong said.

#3d printed Tadpole Endoscope device can improve cancer diagnoses Very recently, we reported on 3d printed icrofishrobots that can be injected directly into our blood to perform complex medical tasks.

The new 3d printed device, called the Tadpole Endoscope (TE), is a reliable and relatively noninvasive solution that could improve the very way we diagnose cancers.

While similar devices, known as wireless capsule endoscopes, have been created in the past, the TE is notable for its soft tail,

So far, the Tadpole Endoscope has been tested in an artificial stomach as well as in a pig stomach

or performing even more precise and intricate tasks, like maneuvering medical instruments. his knowledge is useful for creating a system

and allow greater airflow than other artificial hearts made from metals and plastics. nstead of taking a bunch of nuts and bolts

so further research needs to be conducted before such an artificial heart could be used for its intended purpose.

Whilst the creation of a 3d printed artificial heart remains the ultimate goal for Shepherd and co,

as they are so thin that they can be extruded with ease through any pneumatic syringe.

and hydroxypatite. inding the right right viscosity to be extruded through the syringe while keeping enough robustness to get the 3d scaffold printed at room temperature,

or organ surfaces, suggest the nanomesh"might be implanted in the body as a pacemaker electrode,

It has been used in various therapies as a way to remove excess fibrin proteins from the blood to treat thrombosis and as a topical hemostat.

which can be loaded into a syringe and injected at the site of a wound, where they reassemble themselves into a gel.

the hydrogel without batroxobin, the batroxobin without the hydrogel, a current clinical hemostat known as Gelfoam and an alternative self-assembling hemostat known as Puramatrix and found that none were as effective, especially in the presence of anticoagulants.

place the fingers of the prosthesis around it and lift it. They are unable to feel

users will have more control over the prosthesis. Moran and his team, which includes Harold Burton, Phd, professor of neurobiology;

BAE Systems engineers have adapted existing bone conduction technology often used in commercial headphones and hearing aids for the military domain.

place the fingers of the prosthesis around it and lift it. They are unable to feel

users will have more control over the prosthesis. Moran team includes Harold Burton, Ph d.,professor of neurobiology and Wilson (Zach) Ray, M d.,assistant professor of neurological surgery, both at the School of medicine;

3d-printed patches based upon the model will allow us to tailor prosthesis to patient. inally,

Many of the children with the disease are in a wheelchair in their mid-to-late teenage years.

because they have implantable electronics, like pacemakers and defibrillators, he says. ee making these sensors out of materials that are in these kinds of long-term implants,

electrical devices (pacemakers or defibrillators) or drugs (eg beta blockers. However, these methods are relatively crude: they can stop

which brain signals were transmitted to a robotic prosthesis attached to the patient's legs to produce movement,

and waited while a woman in a wheelchair chased a duck with a broom. Google isn't alone in developing self-driving cars.

sensors in the prosthesis send tiny electric signals to the electrodes A prosthetic arm that can not only restore movement

Last month, researchers from Stanford university developed touch-sensitive artificial skin that not only detects pressure, but can transmit signals to nerve cells.

But I now see a clear path where we can take our artificial skin.''Attached to a robot hand, the skin was able to detect pressure over the same range as its human counterpart,

In a similar way, the artificial skin produces signal pulses that vary in intensity according to the pressure level s

#Forget Toothpaste. This Nifty Toothbrush Scrubs Teeth Clean With Nanotech. If you think about it, toothpaste is pretty gnarly stuff.

who could have powered his pacemaker remotely, or my other grandpa, who can hear if he forgets to change his hearing-aid battery,

electrical devices (pacemakers or defibrillators) or drugs (eg beta blockers. However, these methods are relatively crude: they can stop

tools and surgical instruments like scalpels and needles that require both significant mechanical strength and antifouling property are high value-added products we are exploring for application

and hearing aids and cochlear implants. The proof-of-concept device looks a bit like a thick, plastic, pie-shaped honeycomb split into dozens of slices.

a pacemakers use in heart arrhythmias, efficacy (or side effects) of prescribed medications, and dosing compliance,

#Can One-shot Syringes Save The World? Marc Koska has had shot a at saving the world; a single shot that has taken him 31 years.

finding out how drug addicts used syringes and traveling to immunization camps in Africa and to Geneva to learn about public health policy.

non-reusable syringe, immersed himself in the intricacies of syringe design and patents, toured syringe manufacturing plants and studied plastic injection moulding techniques.

Thirty one years later he found himself in Geneva again in February when he watched as the World Health Organisation executed only the third Global Health Initiative in its 67-year history.

Its edict that only curative health programmes using auto-disable syringes and safety needles will receive WHO funding after 2020 should radically reduce infections caused by dirty syringes.

Dr Selma Khamassi, head of THE WHO team for injection safe, told BBC News that the new policy will hopefully help eliminate the 1. 7million new Hepatitis b cases

Koska invention in 1996 of the K1 auto-disable syringe has led the way. The syringes of his Star company are made of the same materials as conventional syringes,

manufactured on tooling and assembly equipment that already existed and used in exactly the same way as traditional syringes. t looks

and behaves exactly like a normal syringe, he says. t uses 95 per cent of the same manufacturing equipment that makes a traditional syringe

and when using it you do everything you would do with a normal syringe. But if you try to reuse it after that,

it locks and then snaps and breaks in half. We have sold nearly five billion of these

and we have heard never of an instance of them being reused. Koska innovation was to insert a mechanical valve in the plunger.

That sounds simple enough but what he had anticipated not was the difficulty he would have trying to change the business model of syringe manufacture. ifty billion traditional syringes are made around the world every year

Indeed, the price differential between conventional and auto-disable syringes has been a major barrier to getting the world to convert to safe syringes without the big stick of a global regulator.

Standard syringes cost between two and four cents each while mart syringestypically come in at between four and six cents.

who was involved heavily in drawing up its new syringe policy. he world needed guidance, he says. t just needed to unite under something sensible.

Koska is trusted by the US Senate to advise on syringe policy and had a personal audience in Davos this year with most of the leaders in the developing world to get them to commit to adopting his syringe practice.

Britain Queen Elizabeth has awarded also him the Order of The british Empire for service to global health. have been able to pull the manufacturers together,

THE WHO edict states that the organisation wants to convert every syringe in the world to auto-disable by 2020.

The battleground is in the curative market the use of syringes to treat existing health conditions,

which accounts for 95 per cent of the world syringes. The remaining 5 per cent the use of syringes to vaccinate against potential disease converted en masse to auto-disable syringes in 1999.

Koska is realistic expecting the quickest conversions to come in nations that are supported by international donors. t would be ridiculous to give a country $50m to help them with health

if they were reusing syringes because it would not be helping. he says. Conversion costs manufacturers nly a couple of million dollars, according to Koska an expense that is set to become the effective cost of staying in the syringe manufacturing business.

To prove the point, he invited 45 syringe manufacturers to Geneva to see the edict become official. ow they have got it from the horse mouth,

says Koska. hey will have to convert within the coming years. Koska is evangelising from a position of strength.

While a handful of other producers have invented their own auto-disable syringe, Star K1 syringes are manufactured under licence by 13 companies around the world, giving them a substantial lead. here no other product in this space that

I know of that is in more than one factory, says Koska. e have dominated completely in the preventative market because of our easy conversion process.

Star has responded by offering to supply the syringes free of charge to manufacturers who also licence its needle-stick device,

which ensures that syringe needles are covered always when not in use another requirement of the new WHO edict. urs is the cheapest one for covered needles,

with the offer of the free syringe royalty and our innovative needle stick, is that Britain,