Tag Archives | surgery

Bones Grow In Woman’s Eye Following Cosmetic Anti-Wrinkle Stem Cell Procedure

By on December 20, 2012 in News 2

Leap into stem cell revolution without caution, and strange things can happen. Via Popular Science:

Stem cell surgery, in which stem cells from a patient’s body are transplanted into some other part of the body, is gaining in popularity. One patient in Los Angeles found out the hard way that the surgery is largely untested and unregulated.

Stem cells are sometimes used for anti-aging purposes, the idea being that they’ll turn into brand-new tissue and help heal aging cells nearby. But her doctors also used a dermal filler largely made of calcium hydroxylapatite, which happens to trigger stem cells to turn into…well, bone, rather than new tissue.

The woman is recovering nicely, but it’s a really fascinating story of how powerful and potent stem cells are–and how we need to be careful with how we use them in these early stages of stem cell use.

… Read the rest

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Should We Amputate Someone’s Healthy Limb If They So Desire?

By on July 23, 2012 in News 12

How far should we go in enabling people to shape their own physical identities? The Guardian on the ethical quandary posed by Body Integrity Identity Disorder:

In January 2000, the mass media ran several stories about Robert Smith, a surgeon at the Falkirk and District Royal Infirmary who had amputated the legs of two patients at their own request and was planning a third amputation. The director of NHS trust running the hospital at which Smith works described the amputation of healthy limbs as “inappropriate”; since then, no British hospital has performed a voluntary amputation.

The first documented case of BIID dates back to a medical textbook published in 1785, by the French surgeon and anatomist Jean-Joseph Sue, who described the case of an Englishman who fell in love with a one-legged woman, and wanted to become an amputee himself so that he could win her heart. He offered a surgeon 100 guineas to amputate his leg and, when the surgeon refused, forced him to perform the operation at gunpoint.

… Read the rest

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What It’s Like To Have Ultraviolet Vision

By on June 12, 2012 in News 0

Engineer and self described nerd Alek Komarnitsky describes how post cataract surgery, he now sees an expanded color spectrum. What could the lilac glow beyond violet be — auras, pet spirits, Venus rays? Via Komar:

Numerous people who have also had their natural lens removed have written me saying they see similar to what I describe below. I’ve been very happy so far with the Crystals implant for cataract surgery. But one unexpected/interesting aspect is I see a violet glow that others do not … I’m seeing Ultraviolet light!

An eye surgeon recently wrote about blue-violet color changes after Crystalens implants and his experience is that only 3% of patients have experienced (or mentioned!) this phenomena … but some people may just have more sensitive photoreceptors, so the vast majority of the patients would not see this.

Some related interesting tidbits include during WWII, the British used aphakics for signaling using UV lights … since only they could see it.

… Read the rest

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Heartless: Man Alive Without Heart Or Pulse

By on February 1, 2012 in News 35

heartlessPerhaps in the future, we’ll spend our youth — i.e. the first hundred or so years of our lives — with a heart and a pulse, and our next couple hundred without them. DesignTaxi writes:

Two doctors from the Texas Heart Institute successfully replaced a dying man’s heart with a device—proving that it is possible for your body to be kept alive without a heart, or a pulse.

The turbine-like device, that are simple whirling rotors, developed by the doctors does not beat like a heart, rather provides a ‘continuous flow’ like a garden hose.

If you listened with a stethoscope, you wouldn’t hear a heartbeat. If you examined [the] arteries, there’s no pulse. Hooked up to an EKG, [he'd] be flat-lined.”

… Read the rest

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First Synthetic Organ Transplant

By on July 7, 2011 in News 16

trachea

Could the success of synthetic organ transplants lead to the donor’s list becoming obsolete? While it’s still too early to tell, the first trial of a synthetic trachea transplant leaves surgeons hopeful. Via BBC News:

I’ve held a few strange body parts in my hands over the years – all I should stress, in the line of work. They have ranged from mechanical heart pumps to hi-etch prosthetic limbs.

But none more life-like than the synthetic trachea manufactured by scientists from University College London. The team, lead by Professor Alex Seifalian, have patented a nanocomposite material which was used to create the first completely synthetic windpipe.

It was transplanted into a patient whose own windpipe was damaged by cancer. The operation was done in Sweden at the Karolinska University Hospital in conjunction with the Karolinska Institute. You can read the background to the story by my colleague Michelle Roberts, who interviewed the patient and the surgeon in Stockholm.

… Read the rest

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Doctors Are More Harmful Than Germs

By on March 23, 2011 in News 27
DoctorsAreMoreFrontCoverAdapted from Doctors Are More Harmful Than Germs: How Surgery Can Be Hazardous to Your Health – And What to Do About It by Harvey Bigelsen, MD. Reprinted by permission of North Atlantic Books.

“Well Mrs. So-and-So,” says Dr. Almighty, “since you are fifty years old and reaching menopause, you don’t need your uterus anymore; in fact it is probably getting in the way. Since we will be in there, we may as well take out your appendix because you don’t need it either, and taking it out will prevent future appendicitis. Most older women have gall bladder problems, so let’s take that out too, for prevention. Oh, and one of my friends is a plastic surgeon: While you are asleep and can’t feel anything, he can do a tummy tuck and smooth out some of your wrinkles with Botox. Don’t worry, it’s very, very poisonous, but we will just use it on your wrinkles. No big deal!”1

Sounds fabulous, doesn’t it? One-stop surgery: magically taking care of everything that could possibly affect you over the next ten years…

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Girl’s Severed Hand Reattached To Leg

By on November 19, 2010 in News 7

handgraft-150x177Simultaneously joyous and disturbing news via premier British medical science journal Orange UK:

Surgeons in China saved a little girl’s hand – by grafting it on to her leg for three months. Nine-year-old Ming Li lost her hand when she was run over by a tractor on her way to school in July. But her arm was too badly damaged to reattach it to her wrist so doctors temporarily attached it to her right calf instead.

Dr Hou Jianxi, spokesman for the hospital in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, said the hand had now been transplanted back on to her arm. “When she came in, her left hand was completely severed from her body. It was very scary,” he told the Zhoukou Evening Post. “But Ming Li can now move her wrist again and her left hand is a healthy pink colour proving that the blood is circulating well.”

Li will need two more operations over the next year.

… Read the rest

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DIY Medicine From YouTube Videos

By on July 19, 2010 in News 7

youtube19lf5_jpg_772281gm-aOne of the positive things about the recession era is that it’s inspiring people to get creative — for instance, by performing their own minor surgeries, using how-to videos from YouTube. The Globe and Mail reports:

Before, doctors worried about patients who self-diagnosed after doing Internet research on questionable medical websites. But the social Web has given birth to a new beast: users who document their DIY medical procedures on camera and share the videos on YouTube.

Doug Southern would have preferred to see a doctor, but bad timing meant he was without health insurance. He was laid off from his job a short while before a three-year-old baseball-sized cyst on his back became infected.

When his brother-in-law, a family practitioner, and his sister came to visit him in Tuscaloosa, Ala., he decided to put down a towel and pillow on his kitchen floor and turn it into a makeshift operating room so his cyst could be taken out “Alabama style.”

The graphic, seven-minute YouTube video is punctuated with squeals of delight and revulsion from Mr.

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How To Become A Virgin

By on April 29, 2010 in News 8

Najlaa Abou Mehri and Linda Sills report on the booming business of creating virgins, for the BBC:

Young Arab women wait in an upmarket medical clinic for an operation that will not only change their lives, but quite possibly save it. Yet the operation is a matter of choice and not necessity. It costs about 2,000 euros (£1,700) and carries very little risk.

The clinic is not in Dubai or Cairo, but in Paris. And the surgery they are waiting for is to restore their virginity.

Whether in Asia or the Arab world, an unknown number of women face an agonising problem having broken a deep taboo. They’ve had sex outside marriage and if found out, risk being ostracised by their communities, or even murdered.

Now more and more of them are undergoing surgery to re-connect their hymens and hide any sign of past sexual activity. They want to ensure that blood is spilled on their wedding night sheets.

… Read the rest

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