#Transplant Surgeons Revive Hearts After Death Transplant surgeons have started using a device that allows them to eanimatehearts from people who have died recently,
and use the organs to save others. The eart in a boxis a wheeled cart with an oxygen supply, a sterile chamber,
Doctors say it may extend the time a heart can last outside the body and is letting them recover hearts from donors who haven been eligible before.
In at least 15 cases, surgeons in the United kingdom and Australia say they have used the system to successfully transplant hearts removed from patients after theye died.
heart transplants only come from brain dead donors whose hearts are cut away while their bodies are still healthy.
and 30 percent, say doctors, saving the lives of people who would otherwise die from heart failure.
In the U s. about 2, 400 heart transplant occur each year, a figure that has remained essentially unchanged for 20 years.
surgeons at St vincent Hospital in New south wales described three cases in which they waited as little as two minutes after a person heart stopped before they began removing it.
Without such help, surgeons consider hearts from dead donors too damaged to use. he device is vital.
says Stephen Large, a surgeon at Papworth Hospital in the United kingdom, which has used the system as part of eight heart transplants.
Transplant surgeons recognize two major categories of death. People can be brain dead, or they die
because the heart and blood flow stop. The latter is what they now call irculatory death.
a transplant surgeon at the Massachusetts General Hospital. arm is the way to go with metabolically active tissue.
The first successful heart transplant, in 1967, was carried out in South africa from a 25-year-old car accident victim
But surgeons found that hearts that stop naturally often didn start again, or can pump blood,
says Large, the Papworth surgeon. The crisis is particularly severe in the U k, . where handguns and some other firearms are prohibited,
Donors at the Papworth hospital have included victims of car accidents and failed suicide attempts by hanging.
They had severe brain damage but were not brain dead. These patients are usually on mechanical ventilators and some,
the ethical dilemma is how long surgeons should wait before swooping in to retrieve organs. In the U s.,the accepted standard is five minutes,
although Colorado surgeons in 2008 took hearts from brain-damaged newborns after waiting only 75 seconds.
Robert Truog, a medical ethicist at Harvard university, says a question is whether these donors are given really dead
Large hospital, in a rural area a half hour drive from Cambridge, has taken some new and even more radical steps,
All eight transplants so far have been successful he says. One patient was identified publicly as Huseyin Ulucan, a 60-year-old from London w
The plasma is sustained by the injection of high-energy particles from accelerators. The challenge for Tri Alpha design, says Binderbauer,
#Paralyzed Man Arm Wired to Receive Brain signals Scientists at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio say theye used electronics to get around a paralyzed man spinal injury,
permitting him to use an implant in his brain to move his arm and hand.
says Robert Kirsch, a biomedical engineer at Case Western. He also directs the Cleveland FES Center,
which develops technologies for people with paralysis. The project, described today at the meeting of the Society for neuroscience in Chicago,
Volunteers in brain-implant studies have moved previously computer cursors and controlled robotic arms. Last year, a different Ohio man with partial arm paralysis received a brain implant
and was able to mentally open and close his hand using strips of external electrodes placed around his forearm.
because the new volunteer has a spinal injury that prevents him from moving his arms at all.
says that nine months ago surgeons implanted two bunches of silicon electrodes, called Utah arrays, into the volunteer motor cortex.
To complete the bridge of the man spinal cord injury, doctors then inserted more than 16 fine wires into the volunteer right arm and hand.
Electrical impulses sent to those electrodes cause different muscles to contract, creating movement in the shoulder, elbow,
Implants placed in contact with the brain motor cortex can gather far more detailed information however, including estimates of
Spritam is an epilepsy medication used to treat seizures in children and adults. It's porous thanks to the 3d printing process,
noted Spritam is designed to help epilepsy patients adhere to their treatment regimen and should help children and seniors in particular.
who has been paralysed for more than a decade after a spinal cord injury, was able to detect with nearly 100 percent accuracy which of his robotic fingers were being touched by researchers.
but the study tells us the enzyme has the right properties to eventually become a successful therapeutic.
and its degradation of nicotine produced no toxic metabolitesll good signs for a potential therapeutic. opefully we can improve its serum stability with our future studies
so that a single injection may last up to a month, first author Song Xue, a Scripps graduate student, said in the release d
whereas stimulation with ultrasound will require no such surgery. his is said noninvasive, Chalasani. t the first demonstration of this genetic enhancement of ultrasound neurostimulation,
In addition to being a step in the right direction for eventual lab-grown kidneys for transplant, the structures could help scientists screen drugs for toxicity and model normal and diseased kidney function,
the authors argue in Nature today (October 7). ) t not a kidney, it a kidney model, study coauthor Melissa Little of the Murdoch Children Research Institute in Melbourne
with potential medical uses. his may even find use in biomedical applications, such as cardiac surgeryhe says. thin-whiskered catheter tip could be used during surgery to track the relative position inside the heart,
potentially reducing the risk of injury, or atrial fibrillation. t
#Epilepsy drug is approved first FDA 3d printed pill The first 3d printed pill has been approved for use by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA.
Developed by Aprecia Pharmaceuticals, Spritam (levetiracetam) is an oral adjunctive therapy to treat a range of seizures in adults and children with epilepsy.
The drug is fabricated with Aprecia proprietary Zipdose Technology platform, which uses 3d printing to produce a porous,
high-dose formulation that rapidly disintegrates with the intake of a small amount of liquid.
According to Aprecia, potential therapies made via Zipdose are assembled in layers without using compression forces or traditional moulding techniques.
000mg that disintegrate in the patient in less than 10 seconds. y combining 3d printing technology with a highly-prescribed epilepsy treatment,
such as applying anticancer medications to melanomas or applying growth factors and antibiotics for wound healing, said Jin Di,
The paper, tretch-Triggered Drug Delivery from Wearable Elastomers Containing Therapeutic Depots, is published online in the journal ACS Nano.
the researchers believe it has a wide range of potential applications, from consumer electronics and medical sensing devices,
to hearing aids and cochlear implants. ee invented a sensing system that can efficiently, reliably and inexpensively solve an interesting problem that modern technology has to deal with on a daily basis,
it should also be possible to improve the sound fidelity and increase functionalities for applications like hearing aids and cochlear implants.
the system reportedly has the potential to aid sick or disabled people. eople with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) motor neuron disease,
or high spinal cord injuries face difficulties communicating or using their limbssaid Muller. ecoding what they intend from their brain signals could offer means to communicate
or toxic materials, said Tim Moorsom from the School of Physics & Astronomy at Leeds University,
#Tadpole endoscope offers new hope for gastrointestinal cancer detection Hong kong researchers have devised a swimming housing for a capsule endoscopy camera which can be steered around to provide better images inside the stomach
and intestines The problem of looking at the inside of the body is a pressing one for doctors,
Cancers in this system the oesophagus, stomach, intestines and rectum are major causes of death and difficult to investigate,
and endoscopy, where a similar system goes in the other end are so unpleasant and traumatic for the patient.
and send pictures back to doctors isn a new one: indeed, so-called capsule endoscopy currently the best way to get pictures of the intestines between the stomach and colorectal system, the boundary zone between gastroscopy and endoscopy.
But it isn without drawbacks: The speed of transport through the system, from muscular ripples along the intestines called peristalsis can vary widely from person to person;
it can be difficult to determine precisely where lesions and growths are, because of mismatches between imaging speed and peristalsis,
Surgery Training Centre, both at the Chinese University of Hong kong, attempting to mimic the movement of the larval amphibians to design a capsule endoscope with a controllable swimming action that doctors can steer around inside the stomach to provide a guided tour,
then orient it ideally for its dive into the intestines where peristalsis can take over for the rest of its journey.
returning to the hospital the following day for the clinician to retrieve images from the pad. uture works include optimising the system model
including non-fouling medical tools and devices such as scalpels and implants, as well as nozzle heads for 3d printing.
a development with applications ranging from surgical scopes to security cameras to capture a broader perspective at a fraction of the size required by conventional lenses.
Identifying with precision the source of that anxiety, and the appropriate focus of action, is rather more challenging.
It is the marketplace of human knowledge, queries, anxieties, ideas, journeys, hopes, sorrows and dreams.
we can implement priority measures for ambulances, buses, etc-that a standard feature in some software and has been for years,
such as those transporting people between hospitals, cutting NHS fuel costs and improving patient care. So far, 20 traffic lights are using the system in Newcastle city centre.
#Instagram for doctors: how Figure 1 is crowdsourcing diagnoses Where do doctors turn when even they don know what wrong with you?
Colleagues? Books? The internet? A Canadian startup wants to make the answer an Instagram for doctors.
Figure 1 is an app that allows iphone and Android-owning doctors to share images of diseases, injuries and everything in between.
Launched in 2013, the app was born from the idea that sharing images of what confounds doctors with other doctors across the world can help point them in the direction of the right answer.
It something doctors were already doing. Over 10,000 texts, Whatsapps and emails with images of curious and classic cases are being sent in the US each day
according to Dr. Joshua Landy, cofounder of Figure 1, who sought to provide a more secure and useful alternative. edicine has used always asynchronous communications such as pagers
so colleagues could be collaborating on a diagnosis using the app while unknowingly standing next to each other.
but only medical staff be that doctors, nurses or other medically trained personnel can become erified In the same way Twitter blue tick verifies that a user is who they say they are,
Figure 1 will verify someone is a medic by contacting their hospital or a suitable authority database.
The company is verifying 1, 000s of doctors a week across 40 countries and at some stage Landy expects to be verifying all users who join,
but not at present. ee not after gore seekers, but in some countries such as India reliable databases of doctors are nonexistent,
so we don want to keep them out, explained Landy. Uploading images isn quite as easy as Instagram.
and is kept by the doctor, not Figure 1. Once uploaded, images are queued before being reviewed manually.
Verified doctors can be aged which sends them a notification of a query or picture asking for their expert opinion.
While Figure 1 has not found widespread adoption in the UK only one of 10 doctors contacted by the Guardian had heard even of it those that have started using the app say that it provides a great platform for learning
Dr Vikas Shah a consultant radiologist at University Hospitals Leicester. upload radiology cases such as x-rays or CT SCANS with a question or two,
borders, medical specialities and grades. The app is popular with medical students and forms part of their adoption of social media and the new smartphone and tablet tools that are increasingly being used in hospitals,
according to Shah. t is safe to use and there are strict regulations around privacy and anonymity,
#Brain-training game helps'minimise impact of schizophrenia on life'A rain traininggame improves the cognitive function of people with schizophrenia
was tested for four weeks by 22 participants with a schizophrenia diagnosis. Schizophrenia is a long-term mental health condition
which can contribute to behavioural changes, confused thinking, apathy and, in some cases, delusions or hallucinations.
People with schizophrenia may experience cognitive impairments, including poor episodic memory, which affects remembering things such as times and dates,
Wizard aims to improve the cognitive functionality and episodic memory of people with schizophrenia, with in-game tasks including users moving through rooms and identifying items in boxes and character locations.
e need a way of treating the cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia, such as problems with episodic memory,
n conjunction with medication and current psychological therapies, Wizard could help people with schizophrenia minimise the impact of their illness on everyday life. eople with schizophrenia often find studying
The employment rate for people with schizophrenia was recorded at 8%,according to a 2013 paper. The Wizard game will be included as a mode within the popular brain-training app, Peak,
Could ractor beamtechnology be a reality in medicine? e can move bigger and heavier objects than we have done,
the scientists see medical applications as a priority for the technology. t could be used to manipulate kidney stones, clots,
who was paralyzed after suffering a spinal cord injury more than a decade ago. An array of electrodes was placed in the volunteer's sensory cortex (part of the brain that identifies touch)
scientists linked an antibody with a derivative of a group of antibiotics called rifamycin. This resulting drug proved to be a powerful new treatment against Staphylococcus aureus;
it actually helped mice clear staph infections at a stage when conventional antibiotics normally stop being effective.
What's truly different here is that unlike the related antibiotic rifampicin the linked antibody-antibiotic unit can kill Staphylococcus bacteria inside cells.
This means that it might one day be possible to use this technique to treat people with life-threatening antibiotic-resistant infections.
repeated infections that can be fatal. And to make matters worse, certain strains have become resistant to common antibiotics.
As a result, one type of resistant staph bacteria called MRSA causes over 80,000 infections and 11,285 deaths occur every year.
That's why researchers want to find ways to kill the pathogen when it's located inside cells,
a hideout where antibiotics typically used against staph infections aren't as effective.""Staph can hide inside blood cells for a couple of hours or days,
That's a big problem because drugs that are used normally against staph infections can take over four hours to work far longer than it takes for Staph bacteria to move into new cells,
'Can we tag the bacteria with antibodies armed with really potent antibiotics and kill these pathogens inside the cell?'"
Animals who received the treatment were able to recover from staph infections much sooner and with fewer negative health effects than they would have otherwise,
Antibodies are made, of course, by the immune system but for the last several decades, biotechnology companies have made them as well.
Genentech manufactured antibodies based on those the immune system makes to combat staph infections. Then, the researchers attached the antibiotics to the antibody by using amino acids as glue.
When combined the drug becomes far better at specifically targeting staph at specifically targeting Staph bacteria compared with conventional antibiotics."
whether Staph bacteria hidden in cells are repeated responsible for infections, but if that's the case, then this treatment could put a stop to that by clearing the body of bacterial reservoirs.
it's possible that this treatment might one day help people avoid repeated infections, Mariathasan says.
THIS MIGHT HELP PEOPLE AVOID REPEATED INFECTIONS The technique might also prove to be less harsh on the body than common staph treatments.
doctors will probably only be able to give it to patients with a firm diagnosis. In some parts of the world,
that kind of diagnosis isn possible. Still, the act of combining two different weapons antibodies and antibiotics to fight off infections is an intriguing idea.
Today study suggests the technique is ripe for exploration c
#HTC One Max stored fingerprints where any app could see them HTC failed to lock down fingerprints captured by one of its phones,
Almost every new Android handset features some sort of solution for giving it a rapid injection of energy,
since 1998 and they've even discovered that the Grand canyon is full of mercury, far exceeding wildlife toxicity thresholds.
and too much exposure to mercury can lead to serious health problems for humans and wildlife. There have been ideas for ways to remove mercury pollution,
The researchers found that the material can also remove other toxic metals from water and it safely stores the pollutants until it can be removed.
represents an inspiring case history for would-be female entrepreneurs. And the"Woman Entrepreneur of the Year"award
#Roche diagnostics & SAP Team to Fight Diabetes In 2014, diabetes took 4. 9 million lives worldwide.
That's one death every seven seconds. 52 million Europeans are living with diabetes, and in Germany alone, there are 6 to 8 million documented cases.
German-based Roche diagnostics is dedicated to driving personalized and preventative medicine, and with the severity of diabetes on the forefront of focus, Roche, in partnership with SAP, created new preventative care package.
The bundle, called Accu-Chek View, includes a blood glucose monitor, a wearable fitness tracker and an app developed by SAP that are integrated all together.
and transmit the information to the doctor's office via the app. All data transferred is stored securely
The app allows the doctor to monitor the patient remotely and allows the patient to communicate with the doctor's office.
This eliminates unnecessary trips to the physician, saving time and money. This strengthened patient-doctor relationship facilitates a supportive
and empowering psychological effect on patients. Slip ups in lifestyle can be caught quickly because the app will red-flag the issue,
the doctor can intervene, and the doctor and patient can work on solutions together. Even pre-diabetics can benefit from this preventative care app.
By using the app to detect the early signs of diabetes, individuals can make the changes necessary to live a normal life.
This Wednesday April 29th, Dr. Oliver Haferbeck, Head of Diabetes Care at Roche diagnostics will be part of a live panel on the Coffee break with Game Changers Radio.
Listen to the discussion titled, MD in the Palm of your Hand-Connected Care, and tune in live at 11 AM EST. You can also follow the conversation on Twitter via#SAPRADIO o
#Lifesaving research in the cloud Using the power of the cloud to improve organisational efficiencies is one thing,
but the potential benefits that can come from adopting on-demand IT in medical research are truly life-changing,
and clinicians in their quests to find cures for cancer, lupus and other diseases. The team used a preexisting next-generation sequencing toolkit,
The American Cancer Society uses cloud-based office and collaboration technology to improve organisational efficiencies.
cloud technology is vital to the medical world. On-demand IT cuts costs and increases healthcare options,
#SAP and Heidelberg University Hospital Personalize Pregnancy Care This Sunday is International Women's Day,
Eminently preventative in nature, connected care helps health providers stop illness before it starts. Through mobile innovations and sensor technologies, today's doctors can report on key health indicators to prevent illnesses altogether
or detect it early, saving lives and thousands in reactive care costs. Heidelberg University Hospital, one of the largest hospitals in all of Europe
is a perfect example of connected care working to improve women's lives. In partnership with SAP and abcmedien, the University Hospital developed an app to provide pregnant women all information needed along their pregnancy and beyond.
However, unlike the typical pregnancy app, which only pushes consumer product information, the healthcare experts at Heidelberg University Hospital created this app to serve as a dual resource for both mothers and physicians alike.
Because pregnancy doesn't require frequent doctors'appointments, it's difficult to gather feedback from pregnant moms.
To maintain a close relationship with mothers during pregnancy the app asks users discrete and subtle psychological questions purposed to gather information to identify
and can affect brain chemicals, inducing antepartum depression and/or anxiety. According to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, roughly 14-23 percent of women will struggle with symptoms of depression at some point during their pregnancy.
Luckily, antepartum depression is 100 percent treatable, but in many cases, the pregnant mother assumes that the mood changes are nothing more than normal hormonal imbalances (similar to PMS).
At Heidelberg University Hospital, doctors can analyze the answers obtained through the app, and proactively identify mothers at risk for such illness
and provide them with the necessary resources to treat the depression before it takes effect.
because research suggests that children of women who experienced depression during pregnancy have a higher risk of becoming depressed as adults (JAMA Psychiatry).
and was built on the SAP Mobile Platform to provide Heidelberg University Hospital an intuitive interface to connect doctors with patients and vice versa.
In the future, Heidelberg University Hospital hopes to expand the app to help treat and monitor cancer patients as well as other diseases.
By engaging with pregnant women and monitoring their health via this mobile application, Heidelberg University Hospital can reduce immediate and long-term risks for mother and for baby.
The traditional relationship between patient and doctor still exists but now, with connected care, society is transitioning to a more proactive and preventive patient/doctor relationship leading to healthier lives and lower healthcare costs s
#Italy's#6bn broadband plan: Spread 100mbps far and wide, fill in the rural notspots Summary: The government has laid down#6bn to give Italy better broadband,
and it's hoping local telcos will do the same. On Tuesday, the Italian government approved a plan to boost broadband connectivity in the country
and provide the medical standards of 37 countries. Source: ZDNET Korea (zdnet. co. kr) window. console && console. log && console. log("ADS:
#Germ-slaying robots fight infections Here's the problem: According to the CDC there are about 1. 7 million hospital-acquired infections in the U s. each year,
and complications arising from those infections lead to nearly 100,000 deaths annually. The health care and liability costs associated with infections are astronomical,
and despite increasingly rigid policies and best practices designed to keep hospitals sterile, human workers aren't great at disinfecting the thousands of surfaces in a hospital room where viruses
and bacteria may linger. Enter the robots. An emerging class of robotic technology uses UV LIGHT to fuse the DNA of viruses
and bacteria and prevent them from reproducing, and in the last couple years these bots have seen rapid adoption across the country.
but some hospital administrators have come to view them as the first must-have robot tech in a health care industry that's bracing for big changes with the imminent arrival of robot cleaners, diagnosticians, surgeons, and nurses."
"The acquisition of this technology is simply another way that we're working to protect the integrity of our health care environment,
"says Khiet N. Trinh, M d.,chief medical officer at Bon Secours St mary's Hospital in Richmond, Virginia,
The system also tracks infection control data and simultaneously uploads the information to the hospital's web portal,
meaning it integrates well into a new health care paradigm centering around data collection and analysis."With rising issues around health care-associated infections,
hospitals that provide an extra level of care for patients by disinfecting rooms with TRU-D are not only protecting patients'well-being,
but also ensuring that patients aren't being held financially responsible for things like preventable hospital-acquired infections,
"says Chuck Dunn, president of TRU-D LLC.""TRU-D can achieve 99.99 percent disinfection of all viruses and bacteria.
It takes the guesswork out of previous protocols and ensures confidence in clinicians and patients alike."
"The market for disinfection robots is expected to grow to $80 million by 2017. In part this is thanks to the Ebola scare.
When nurses in Dallas became infected, they inadvertently drew attention to the problem of hospital-acquired infections.
Hospitals are interested in technology that integrate into existing protocols and workflows, which these bots do need,
and that has led to lots of activity in the space. TRU-D's biggest competitor is Xenex,
In 2014 the company entered the disinfection robot market when it announced plans to distribute a system built by California-based Ultraviolet Devices.
such as those used in the Clorox-distributed system, are toxic, and that Xenex's system works faster than Clorox's. Xenex,
though UV disinfection systems have been shown to be generally effective in independent tests, the competing technologies have various strengths and weaknesses
what technology works best and whether their use reduces rates of hospital-acquired infections. As more hospitals adopt the robots,
it's expected that more data will become available about the advantages and flaws of each product
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