Technology News

6 LATEST inventions for circulation and nervous system!

I don’t think there is the one website you could try unless it is Yahoo! Answers.

Intra-Aortic Balloon Pump (IABP) is a counterpulsation pumping device - essentially a big balloon that is placed INSIDE the patient’s aorta and inflated in time (just after systole) to help push blood around the circulation. This is used in some patients where their heart is not pushing well by itself (eg after cardiac surgery).

“Octopus” cardiac suction clamp for beating heart surgery - This is a recent development in heart surgery. In the past, in order to sew a bypass graft onto a heart or major blood vessel it has been necessary to give the heart medication to make it stop beating. This is so the surgeon could put in extremely fine stitches in the right place. This would necessitate the patient being placed on CardioPulmonary Bypass - a separate machine which keeps pumping blood around the patient’s body. This new technology, the “octopus clamp” is essentially a suction clamp that holds one part of the heart very very still so the heart can still be beating and the surgeon can sew the graft onto the heart.

Endoluminal Aortic Stent/Graft
In a diseased and weakened aorta - the traditional technique to replace the weakened section has been to open up the abdomen from the front, get past all the intestines and such, find the aorta, clamp it off and cut out the weak bit and sew in the graft. However, in certain circumstances new technology allows the graft to be inserted from a smaller cut in the groin where the graft can be fed up the aorta “endoluminally” ie. inside the aorta. The stent can be deployed to cover the weakened area and attached securely from inside the blood vessel. This is a much smaller procedure and if patients are suitable for this type of operation they tend to do much better in terms of recovery.

Let me have a think about some nervous system advances.

Okay

Stereotactic Radiotherapy - “Radiosurgery”, “Gamma Knife” - is a relatively recent advance in treatment of brain cancers where instead of a few beams of radiation aimed at the cancer, the radiotherapists use multiple very low dose beams which are very accurately aimed so that each subsequent beam passes through the cancer, but passes through a different part of the patient’s brain. Hence most of the brain gets a very low dose, but the cancer gets a mega dose of radiation and dies.

Thrombolytic therapy for Stroke
When a clot blocks off a part of the blood supply to the brain, that part of the brain loses oxygen and glucose and doesn’t function. This condition is commonly known as a “stroke”. Recent advances have suggested (although not entirely proven) that clot busting drugs, similar to the clot busting drugs given previously for heart attacks, could dissolve these clots and allow blood flow. Actually, we’ve know about the possibility of this for as long as we’ve had the clot busting drugs - the major problem is that these drugs can cause bleeding in the brain! So the advances really are to do with selecting the appropriate patients who will do well with this type of therapy based on clinical features (recent onset, not likely to be a bleed, etc) as well as advanced brain scanning techniques. Further to this, in 2004, a team from Texas is pioneering the use of ultrasound to enhance clot busting (don’t ask me how they get the ultrasound through the skull)!

Gene Therapy Advances for Parkinson’s Disease
Parkinson’s Disease is a disorder of a part of the movement section of the brain. People who suffer from it have terrible tremors and difficulty performing day-to-day activities. Treatment to date has centered around giving them tablets that boost levels of or replace the neurotransmitter in that region of the brain. Newer approaches that are showing promise include a technique where a very fine tube is inserted through a hole made in the skull. This tube is placed in the movement section and a specially engineered virus is delivered through it. This virus is designed to insert a gene into the cells, and this gene enables the cells to make a certain chemical messenger to calm down overactive movement signals and hence reduce the symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease. It is still experimental.