After a traumatic injury, surgeons may need to repair damage using flaps of tissue taken from elsewhere in the body. One of the challenges with this approach is that the blood vessels of the “new” tissue must be connected with those at the injury site. At the moment, surgeons use a handheld ultrasound scanner that […]
Author: Medgadged
Blood Vessel on a Chip to Study Angiogenesis and Test Anti-Cancer Drugs
Scientists at the Institute of Industrial Science, the University of Tokyo, have developed a blood vessel on a chip. The device makes it simpler to study angiogenesis, the process of new blood vessel growth. In addition, the technology could aid researchers in developing new anti-cancer drugs that act by inhibiting angiogenesis in tumors. Angiogenesis is […]
Put on Two Surgical Gloves as Fast as One With GAMMEX PI Glove-in-Glove System
Putting on two pairs of gloves is a common occurrence in medicine, particularly among surgeons that work with sharp instruments. It’s frustrating and feels like a waste of time, but that’s reality. Now there are gloves that come already doubled, while being easy to snap on. The GAMMEX PI Glove-in-Glove system from Ansell, a company […]
Blood-Vessel-On-a-Chip Helps Identify Safer Clot Prevention Drug
The functionality of many drug candidates can be extremely difficult to study, particularly when dynamic processes on a scale larger than a drug’s molecule, such as blood flow, are involved. A research team has just used a “blood-vessel-on-a-chip,” a device developed at Harvard’s Wyss Institute, to identify a set of synthetic molecules that has impressive […]
Artificial Scales for Fixing Tissues, Attaching Medical Implants Inside Body
Scales, such as those on fish and other animals, exhibit an amazing ability to keep attached to soft tissue. They’re strong while being flexible, so scientists have been trying to recreate some of their qualities for use in implants and other medical devices. Now an international team of researchers, headed by a group at the University […]
Medtronic’s Synchromed II Approved to Pump Remodulin Into Veins to Treat Pulmonary Hypertension
The FDA has issued approval for the Implantable System for Remodulin, which is really the Synchromed II drug infusion system from Medtronic, consisting of an implantable pump, controller, and catheter. The system is used to treat pulmonary arterial hypertension by delivering Remodulin (Treprostinil) into the vein at the superior caval-atrial junction. The pump is implanted under the skin […]
Bursting Oxygen-loaded Microbubbles Near Solid Tumors Can Enhance Radiation Therapy
Scientists at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia have developed a new technique to improve the effectiveness of radiation therapy for solid tumors. Their method employs nanotechnology in the form of oxygen-filled microbubbles that can be burst using focused ultrasound when they are near a tumor. The majority of solid tumors are oxygen-deficient as they quickly […]
Stethee, an AI Powered Electronic Stethoscope, Now Available
M3DICINE, a Brisbane, Australia firm, just launched an “AI enabled” electronic stethoscope called Stethee. The device, which we originally profiled a few years ago while it was still a Kickstarter project, can be used like a traditional stethoscope to auscultate patients, but to also amplify, filter, and record sounds, as well as to analyze the […]
Pediatric HAL Simulates Real Child to Practice Medical Procedures On
Gaumard Scientific, a company headquartered in Miami, Florida, is releasing what it claims is the “world’s most advanced wireless and tetherless mobile pediatric patient simulator”. It’s intended as a training tool to practice all kinds of common tests and procedures, including helping to improve clinicians’ interactions with children. The Pediatric HAL is only slightly creepy […]
Humon Hex Measures Muscle Oxygen Levels to Improve Workouts
At the recently concluded CES 2018 in Las Vegas, Humon, a firm based in Cambridge, MA, was showing off its Humon Hex wearable device for measuring muscle oxygen levels. The product is intended to help athletes keep an eye on a metric that is important to optimize training routines, but that was previously difficult to […]
GYENNO Gait Aid Helps Avoid Gait Freeze in Parkinson’s Patients
GYENNO, a Chinese company that develops technologies to help people with Parkinson’s and other movement disorders, was showing off its Gait Aid Equipment package at the recent CES 2018 conference in Las Vegas. The company believes that Gait Aid, which consists of a number of devices that work together to influence how people walk, will help […]
milliDelta Robot Hoping to Power Microsurgeries of The Future
Surgical robots of the future will have to be fast, careful, and powerful in their capabilities. Movies, such as The Fifth Element, now more than 20 years old, have given us a glimpse into the future of medicine and bioprinting where robots can rapidly perform otherwise extremely tedious tasks. This future may not be far […]
milliDelta Robot Hoping to Power Microsurgeries of The Future
Surgical robots of the future will have to be fast, careful, and powerful in their capabilities. Movies, such as The Fifth Element, now more than 20 years old, have given us a glimpse into the future of medicine and bioprinting where robots can rapidly perform otherwise extremely tedious tasks. This future may not be far […]
Microfluidic Mixer Combines Fluids without Backflow to Make Advanced Portable Diagnostics Practical
Lab on a chip devices are designed to perform advanced diagnostics and drug testing using small samples of blood and other body fluids. We’ve written about many such devices, including for assessing the effectiveness of chemo and for picking out circulating tumor cells, but microfluidic technologies that rely on capillary or vacuum powered techniques have […]
Ultrathin Needle for Delivering Drugs to Specific Brain Regions
Researchers at MIT have developed a miniaturized cannula that employs a needle as thin as a human hair to directly deliver drugs to highly specific brain regions, even as small as one cubic millimeter. This direct dosing approach could allow doctors to target specific brain circuits, potentially helping to reduce side-effects in the rest of […]
Delta4 Discover Measures Radiation from Accelerators, Rolling Out in U.S.
ScandiDos, a firm out of Uppsala, Sweden, has begun installing its Delta4 Discover transmission detector in the U.S. with the first site at the The University Medical Center in Lubbock, Texas. The devices measures the amount of radiation delivered to a patient from an accelerator. It’s designed, and approved, for use on Varian’s TrueBeam and Clinac iX […]
Microfluidic Device Mimics the Blood-Retinal Barrier
Researchers in Barcelona have developed a microfluidic chip that mimics the human blood-retinal barrier. The device contains several parallel compartments, containing different cell types, to mimic the layered structure of the retina. The researchers hope to use the device to test the effect of drugs on the retina and to better study diabetic retinopathy. At […]
Hologic’s New Fluoroscan InSight FD Mini C-Arm for Extremity Scans
Hologic just launched its new Fluoroscan InSight FD Mini C-Arm, an extremities imaging system intended for specialists such as orthopedists and podiatrists. The user can select between high resolution or low dosage modes, varying between patients as needed. The low-dose mode can produce images with up to half the radiation compared the machine’s automatic setting. The […]
Brain-Computer Interface Lets Users Learn to Move Cursor in Seconds
Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) allow severely disabled people to control wheelchairs, robotic arms, and of course computers. While much progress has been achieved toward improving the accuracy and precision of these devices, they have required long periods of tedious training for users to get acquainted with the technology. The computer has to be taught to understand each […]
CT and MRI Scans Projected onto Patients for Accurate Surgeries, Medical Education
Our bodies are unique not only in their external physical appearance, but on the inside too! Clinicians treating patients, and the patients themselves, often have to imagine where specific organs, bones, and other anatomical features are located. A surgeon, for example, has to decide where to make an incision in order to be as close […]