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Wearable devices with body sensors have been seen by many as a way to get the general public to be better aware of their overall health. It's a nice idea, but it still requires people to remember to wear their devices, to check up on the readings via the smartphone, and to recharge the devices when they are low on power. Some people think that wearables still have fundamental limitations that can be overcome with more passive and pervasive monitoring. Engineers at Portugal's Institute of Telecommunications are working on integrating...

October 15th, 2018 by Editors
Pain Management
Following a difficult surgery, some patients end up experiencing cognitive decline and delirium, which seems to arise from inflammatory changes in the brain, that are still poorly understood. This inflammation is difficult to control in a targeted way, but researchers at Duke University seem to have discovered that electrical nerve stimulation may do the trick. The investigators  have been using vagus nerve stimulation, the same method that is now common to control epilepsy, chronic pain, and drug resistant depression, among other conditions. In a study on lab mice with serious...

October 15th, 2018 by Editors
Informatics
Modern medicine relies a great deal on computers to help doctors diagnose and treat disease and administer care. A typical medical education, though, provides next to no knowledge about how images are processed by MRI systems or how big data is being used to expand our understanding of a variety of diseases. Academics at the Fraunhofer MEVIS Institute for Medical Image Computing and Bremen University in Germany have come together to offer a new area of study designed to get future doctors to become acquainted with different computational techniques. The new...

October 15th, 2018 by Editors
Cardiac Surgery
Cambridge Consultants, a UK firm, and OmniVision, based in California, have developed an impressive intravascular camera. It produces native images at 400 x 400 pixel resolution, considerably better than existing fiber-optic angioscopes, but engineers at Cambridge Consultants believe this can be boosted to 1,600 x 1,600 with its own software technique that "harnesses deep learning to enhance low resolution images without the blurring associated with traditional upscaling," as the company describes it. Unlike fiber-optic devices, in which the actual imaging component is positioned proximal to the operator, the new device...

October 15th, 2018 by Editors
Materials
Mechanical devices, particularly 3D printed ones, don't have much room for electronics and so they remain "dumb" in many ways. Electronics need a power source and integrating them within moving components that are already complex can create greater difficulties. Engineers at the University of Washington have now developed a simple way to make devices, such as prosthetic arms, rehab tools, and pill bottles, be able to self-report on their usage without having any electronics at all. Their technology brings together specially created gears, simple antennas, and a nearby wifi router ...

October 15th, 2018 by Editors
Plastic Surgery
Surgical Innovation Associates, headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, won FDA clearance for its DuraSorb Monofilament Mesh. The bioabsorbable surgical mesh is designed for use in reconstructive and cosmetic surgeries, providing structural support for about a year, eventually being absorbed by the body and disappearing from the surgical site to be replaced by native tissue. “The idea of a mesh that is there when you need it and gone when you don’t is appealing, for much the same reason that absorbable sutures have become a key part of a surgeon’s armamentarium –...

October 12th, 2018 by Editors
Vascular Surgery
Eximo Medical, based in Israel, won FDA clearance for its B-Laser Atherectomy System that's used to clear out plaque from within narrowed peripheral arteries, including in cases of in-stent restenosis. The laser operates at a 355nm wavelength, the only one of this kind, and the company believes that this wavelength has benefits over the commonly used 308nm excimer lasers. These include "safety, efficacy, cost and ease of use," according to Yoel Zabar, CEO of Eximo Medical. Here's some data on the clinical trials performed using the B-Laser, as per Eximo:...

October 12th, 2018 by Mark O'Reilly
Genetics
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Medicine have developed a new method for sequencing chemical groups attached to the surface of DNA. These chemical groups are modifications of the DNA bases that convey important information relating to the patterns of gene expression. These modifications have been studied for the past two decades and are now known to be involved in the development of a variety of diseases, including cancer, making the identification of these modifications a promising tool for diagnostic and prognostic purposes. Traditional methods for deciphering this...

October 12th, 2018 by Editors
Ophthalmology
Drugs designed to treat eye conditions are often delivered via eye drops. Almost all of the actual drug ends up dripping off the eye and not being properly absorbed. Drug releasing contact lenses are the next big thing to treat conditions such as glaucoma, and they may end up being pretty smart in addition to being good drug delivery methods. Scientists at the Southeast University and China Pharmaceutical University, both in Nanjing, China, have developed a contact lens that can release a drug into the eye and also report on the...

October 12th, 2018 by Editors
Public Health
In America and many other countries, driving is a part of life without which many things are impossible to do. Following injuries to the legs and feet, patients hope to recover their ability to drive more than just about anything else. The problem is that physicians don't have objective methods to judge how well someone can operate the pedals to control a car in the real world. Students at Bucknell University's bioengineering program have heard of this problem and developed a device to address this specific need. Currently, patients are...

October 12th, 2018 by Editors
Medicine
At the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, there's a great deal of emphasis placed on starting students to learn ultrasound techniques early on in their studies. This is important, as it helps students relate directly to real anatomy that they're observing, to achieve a certain level of intuition when using ultrasound, which often takes years, and to learn how to interact with patients. The medical school is now introducing portable ultrasound machines equipped with 12-lead ECG heart monitoring to better understand the relationship between mechanical dynamics of the heart,...

October 11th, 2018 by Editors
Exclusive
It's that time of the year when we call on technological visionaries, medical futurists, and creative people of all kinds to submit medical science fiction stories to our annual Medgadget Sci-Fi Writing Contest. At Medgadget, we keep a record of the progress of medical technologies and hope to inspire you to imagine a future where medicine is able to do things that are currently deemed impossible or, even better, have not yet been imagined. Medicine, and the people that work within this field, can be influenced by new ideas and technologies, and we hope...

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FDA Clears DuraSorb Bioabsorbable Surgical Mesh

Surgical Innovation Associates, headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, won FDA clearance for its DuraSorb Monofilament Mesh. The bioabsorbable surgical mesh is designed... October 15th, 2018

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