Tag: heart surgery

The Future of Medicine: Tiny Bladder and Flashlight Sensors

heart_patchesThere’s seems to be no shortage of medical breakthroughs these days! Whether it’s bionic limbs, 3-D printed prosthetic devices, bioprinting, new vaccines and medicines, nanoparticles, or embedded microsensors, researchers and medical scientists are bringing innovation and technological advancement together to create new possibilities. And in recent months, two breakthrough in particular have bbecome the focus of attention, offering the possibility of smarter surgery and health monitoring.

First up, there’s the tiny bladder sensor that is being developed by the Norwegian research group SINTEF. When it comes to patients suffering from paralysis, the fact that they cannot feel when their bladders are full, para and quadriplegics often suffer from pressure build-up that can cause damage to the bladder and kidneys. This sensor would offer a less invasive means of monitoring their condition, to see if surgery is required or if medication will suffice.

pressuresensorPresently, doctors insert a catheter into the patient’s urethra and fill their bladder with saline solution, a process which is not only uncomfortable but is claimed to provide an inaccurate picture of what’s going on. By contrast, this sensor can be injected directly into the patients directly through the skin, and could conceivably stay in place for months or even years, providing readings without any discomfort, and without requiring the bladder to be filled mechanically.

Patients would also able to move around normally, plus the risk of infection would reportedly be reduced. Currently readings are transmitted from the prototypes via a thin wire that extents from the senor out through the skin, although it is hoped that subsequent versions could transmit wirelessly – most likely to the patient’s smartphone. And given that SINTEF’s resume includes making sensors for the CERN particle collider, you can be confident these sensors will work!

senor_cern_600Next month, a clinical trial involving three spinal injury patients is scheduled to begin at Norway’s Sunnaas Hospital. Down the road, the group plans to conduct trials involving 20 to 30 test subjects. Although they’re currently about to be tested in the bladder, the sensors could conceivably be used to measure pressure almost anywhere in the body. Conceivably, sensors that monitor blood pressure and warn of aneurisms or stroke could be developed.

Equally impressive is the tiny, doughnut-shaped sensor being developed by Prof. F. Levent Degertekin and his research group at the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech. Designed to assist doctors as they perform surgery on the heart or blood vessels, this device could provide some much needed (ahem) illumination. Currently, doctors and scientists rely on images provided by cross-sectional ultrasounds, which are limited in terms of the information they provide.

tiny_flashlightAs Degertekin explains:

If you’re a doctor, you want to see what is going on inside the arteries and inside the heart, but most of the devices being used for this today provide only cross-sectional images. If you have an artery that is totally blocked, for example, you need a system that tells you what’s in front of you. You need to see the front, back, and sidewalls altogether.

That’s where their new chip comes into play. Described as a “flashlight” for looking inside the human body, it’s basically a tiny doughnut-shaped sensor measuring 1.5 millimeters (less than a tenth of an inch) across, with the hole set up to take a wire that would guide it through cardiac catheterization procedures. In that tiny space, the researchers were able to cram 56 ultrasound transmitting elements and 48 receiving elements.

georgia-tech-flashlight-vessels-arteries-designboom03So that the mini monitor doesn’t boil patients’ blood by generating too much heat, it’s designed to shut its sensors down when they’re not in use. In a statement released from the university, Degertekin explained how the sensor will help doctors to better perform life-saving operations:

Our device will allow doctors to see the whole volume that is in front of them within a blood vessel. This will give cardiologists the equivalent of a flashlight so they can see blockages ahead of them in occluded arteries. It has the potential for reducing the amount of surgery that must be done to clear these vessels.

Next up are the usual animal studies and clinical trials, which Degertekin hopes will be conducted by licensing the technology to a medical diagnostic firm. The researchers are also going to see if they can make their device even smaller- small enough to fit on a 400-micron-diameter guide wire, which is roughly four times the diameter of a human hair. At that size, this sensor will be able to provide detailed, on-the-spot information about any part of the body, and go wherever doctors can guide it.

Such is the nature of the new age of medicine: smaller, smarter, and less invasive, providing better information to both save lives and improve quality of life. Now if we can just find a cure for the common cold, we’d be in business!

Sources: gizmag.com, news.cnet.com

The Future of Medicine: 3D Printing and Bionic Organs!

biomedicineThere’s just no shortage of breakthroughs in the field of biomedicine these days. Whether it’s 3D bioprinting, bionics, nanotechnology or mind-controlled prosthetics, every passing week seems to bring more in the way of amazing developments. And given the rate of progress, its likely going to be just a few years before mortality itself will be considered a treatable condition.

Consider the most recent breakthrough in 3D printing technology, which comes to us from the J.B Speed School of Engineering at the University of Louisville where researchers used a printed model of a child’s hear to help a team of doctors prepare for open heart surgery. Thanks to these printer-assisted measures, the doctors were able to save the life of a 14-year old child.

3d_printed_heartPhilip Dydysnki, Chief of Radiology at Kosair Children’s Hospital, decided to approach the school when he and his medical team were looking at ways of treating Roland Lian Cung Bawi, a boy born with four heart defects. Using images taken from a CT scan, researchers from the school’s Rapid Prototyping Center were able to create and print a 3D model of Roland’s heart that was 1.5 times its actual size.

Built in three pieces using a flexible filament, the printing reportedly took around 20 hours and cost US$600. Cardiothoracic surgeon Erle Austin III then used the model to devise a surgical plan, ultimately resulting in the repairing of the heart’s defects in just one operation. As Austin said, “I found the model to be a game changer in planning to do surgery on a complex congenital heart defect.”

Roland has since been released from hospital and is said to be in good health. In the future, this type of rapid prototyping could become a mainstay for medical training and practice surgery, giving surgeons the options of testing out their strategies beforehand. And be sure to check out this video of the procedure from the University of Louisville:


And in another story, improvements made in the field of bionics are making a big difference for people suffering from diabetes. For people living with type 1 diabetes, the constant need to extract blood and monitor it can be quite the hassle. Hence why medical researchers are looking for new and non-invasive ways to monitor and adjust sugar levels.

Solutions range from laser blood-monitors to glucose-sensitive nanodust, but the field of bionics also offer solutions. Consider the bionic pancreas that was recently trialled among 30 adults, and has also been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for three transitional outpatient studies over the next 18 months.

bionic-pancreasThe device comprises a sensor inserted under the skin that relays hormone level data to a monitoring device, which in turn sends the information wirelessly to an app on the user’s smartphone. Based on the data, which is provided every five minutes, the app calculates required dosages of insulin or glucagon and communicates the information to two hormone infusion pumps worn by the patient.

The bionic pancreas has been developed by associate professor of biomedical engineering at Boston University Dr. Edward Damiano, and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School Dr. Steven Russell. To date, it has been trialled with diabetic pigs and in three hospital-based feasibility studies amongst adults and adolescents over 24-48 hour periods.

bionic_pancreasThe upcoming studies will allow the device to be tested by participants in real-world scenarios with decreasing amounts of supervision. The first will test the device’s performance for five continuous days involving twenty adults with type 1 diabetes. The results will then be compared to a corresponding five-day period during which time the participants will be at home under their own care and without the device.

A second study will be carried out using 16 boys and 16 girls with type 1 diabetes, testing the device’s performance for six days against a further six days of the participants’ usual care routine. The third and final study will be carried out amongst 50 to 60 further participants with type 1 diabetes who are also medical professionals.

bionic_pancreas_technologyShould the transitional trials be successful, a more developed version of the bionic pancreas, based on results and feedback from the previous trials, will be put through trials in 2015. If all goes well, Prof. Damiano hopes that the bionic pancreas will gain FDA approval and be rolled out by 2017, when his son, who has type 1 diabetes, is expected to start higher education.

With this latest development, we are seeing how smart technology and non-invasive methods are merging to assist people living with chronic health issues. In addition to “smart tattoos” and embedded monitors, it is leading to an age where our health is increasingly in our own hands, and preventative medicine takes precedence over corrective.

Sources: gizmag.com, (2)