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Please discuss everything with your doctor first.
Top Medical Advances
Wearable Kidney. Traditional dialysis may soon become a thing of the past
as
one company appears to be close to developing a
Wearable Kidney. This machine would allow dialysis patients greatly
increased mobility and flexibility and would more approximate normal kidney
function.
Universal Flu Vaccine. Scientists now believe they
can target "conserved proteins" on viruses that will
allow Universal Vaccines
that protect mankind from all flus. All current vaccines have limited
success, because they target rapidly mutating areas of the virus. However,
researchers have found proteins, such as the M2 protein, that cannot change on
the virus and thus could be the ideal target of a vaccine.
Diabetes Cure. Researchers appear to be honing in on a new cure
for diabetes where they can take skin cells from the hand and turn them into
stem cells. As if that wasn't incredible enough, they can then trick those
stem cells to do various things including secrete insulin! They believe
this will be available in about ten years. [1]
Nanofibers. Researchers believe that they will soon be able to
inject nonparticles into the body which will then regrow tissues such as skin,
bone, spine and many other applications. Your body generally, when it has
to heal major damage, just heals locally and then seals the wound and give up.
But researchers have already tricked the bodies of mice, using nanosurgaces as a
starting point, to actually grow new nerve fibers in the spinal area - the stuff
of science fiction! The cost is currently very high but should come down
rapidly as other labs and companies join in. [2]
Creation of Red Blood Cells. Scientists have actually come up with a
method of creating red blook cells from stem cells. Furthermore, the
technique will produce sufficient cells that it should be able to be used from
transfusions. The cells do not have nuclei and are not identical to mature
red blood cells but still could be used for many applications. [3]
Laser Sutures. An Israeli scientist has combined lasers with
optical fibers made of silver halide to deliver a near perfect stitch.
Normal stitching is hard to do: generally there is some leaking around the
suture leading to possible infection and some scarring results afterwards.
Laser suturing eliminate much of this as the laser heats the skin to just the
right temperate to almost "weld" the wound and seal it without scarring.
Deep Bleeder Acoustic Coagulation (DBAC). These devices, which are still
in prototype mode and testing, basically are wrapped around the limb of a
soldier (or patient) and then find where internal bleeding has occurred.
Shock occurs when a person loses about 25% of his blood volume in these kind of
situations. The DBAC will not only find the source of such internal
bleeding but then build a three-dimensional model and "cauterize"
the leaks with
ultrasound. There still is a lot of work to do on this but the military
hopes to deploy it soon.
Medical Exoskeleton. Argo Medical Techologies has developed a technology that will allow many
parapalegics to walk again. The technology makes use of motorized legs
that are moved based on sensors placed on the person's body. This
technology is apparently already working: one famous injured Israeli
paratrooper has already used it to walk for the first time in twenty years.
See this article on
Amit Goeffer's
medical exoskeleton for more details.
Modified Osteo-odonto-keratoprosthesis (MOOKP). Say that
three times fast! Scientists have given sight to a completely blind woman
using dental tissue from an extracted tooth. Yes, they rebuilt her cornea
and she could see her hand, the sky and other objects. This holds great promise
in the future for many cases of severe blindness. [4]
REFERENCES:
1) Yourhealth, Dec 2008, p. 10.
2)
Yourhealth, Mar 2009, p. 19.
3) Discover, Jan 2009 issue, published online 12/29/2008
4) http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Technology/woman-regains-vision-tooth-implanted-eye/story?id=8595589
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