There are good and bad sides for everything, and 3D printing is no exception. The new printing technology, which is quickly becoming more popular these days has brought out some questionable ideas, but it also looks to have the potential to actually save lives in the future.

The little guy you see in the image above is Kaiba Gionfriddo. When he was just six weeks old, his parents found out that he had a severe form of tracheobronchomalacia, which makes his trachea collapse due to loosely supporting cartilage. This meant that he would stop breathing on a regular basis. But luckily for him, a 3D-printed tracheal support splint was already being developed by Dr. Glenn Green, University of Michigan associate professor of pediatric otolaryngology, and Dr. Scott Hollister, professor of biomedical engineering and mechanical engineering.

They had to get permission from the US Food and Drug Administration to implant it into young Kaiba as the device wasn’t tested on humans before. After getting emergency clearance they created a computer model of the splint based of a CT scan of Kaiba’s trachea. Then they 3D printed it into a physical object made of a biopolymer called polycaprolactone and implanted it around Kaiba’s airway. He hasn’t had any breathing problems ever since and is now 20 months old. The polymer will be dissolved into his body within two to three years, and by that time more rigid cartilage will be present to prevent the tracheal collapse.

But 3D printing is going to be a blessing not just for children suffering from tracheobronchomalacia. The possibilities of the tech are endless.

As you might know, thousands of people in the US alone are in need for a kidney transplant. But the available number of kidneys are not even enough for half of the number of people in need. Close to 4000 people die in the US every year due to this reason. The answer to this issue could be bio printed kidneys. This is something that is being researched by a team led by Dr. Ibrahim Ozbolat at the University of Iowa.

Their long term goal is to develop “functioning human organs some five or 10 years from now”, according to Ozbolat. This means that patients suffering from other conditions as well could get help from 3D printing done with bio-ink, a solution made of bio materials and living cells. Ozbolat says, “One of the most promising research activities is bioprinting a glucose-sensitive pancreatic organ that can be grown in a lab and transplanted anywhere inside the body to regulate the glucose level of blood“. That could indeed be a great help for the millions of diabetic patients around the world.

Other possibilities include 3D printed skins and prosthetics. The list goes on. How about a 3D printed jaw implant, it’s here. Or how about a 3D printed skull piece, it’s also here. As you can see, the technology of 3D printing is certainly going to play a big part in the medical field in the future, or should we say from now on. It seems to have the potential to save lives while improving the living standards of many others.

What are your thoughts about 3D printing? Do you think that it’s going to play an important in the future of medical science?

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Scientists at Nottingham University are currently working on a new method of treating children suffering from lazy eye. The new treatment uses video games and special glasses, which is already proving to be very effective.

The problem with the current treatment is that children are required to wear an eye patch over their good eye for extended periods of time. The results are usually poor, as patients are reluctant to put the patch on. In comparison the new video game based treatment is not only fun but appears to work even after just a few short sessions.

Developers working on the project have created ‘shutter glasses’. The lens covering the good eye shows static content while the other eye sees the action in the foreground. When combined, users experience the game just as they would playing normally.

Nottingham University are now teaming up with Sony Europe to adapt some current Playstation 3 games for use in the ground breaking treatment.

[ Source ]

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Science is amazing, it’s always interesting to see the latest advances in the medical field that can benefit our way of life. One such innovation is a special all-in-one catheter used to treat arrhythmia.

Normally, a procedure to treat an irregular heartbeat involves two catheters. One is insert to map the heart tissue, determining the cells that are causing the arrythmia. A second, thinner tube is then inserted and directed toward the aberrant cells, killing them through ablation.

The new single catheter, though, does both jobs. It makes use of stretchable electronics and it fills up, not unlike a balloon, until it reaches the inner walls of the blood vessels. When it makes contact, its sensors read a series of data to determine the irregularly-beating cells. The electrodes next to those sites then blast the cells and ablate them.

“It’s all in one, so it maps and zaps,” said project leader John A. Rogers. The fewer steps involved, the better. They’ve still got some challenges ahead, but the “stretchable” combo-catheter was demonstrated successfully on live animal models.

[GizMag via Nature]

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Wireless technology often looked upon as a means for communication and resourcefulness, can also mean the difference between life and death for some people. Take cardiac patients for example, many have an implanted defibrillator that is designed to give an automatic “shock” every time their heart rate takes a spike. This is because the defibrillator concludes that the person is having a heart attack and the shock should jump-start the heart back to a normal rate. But what if you just happen to be getting excited about something. A spike in heart rate is normal in that case.

Well, IMEC of the Netherlands has developed a new type of wireless body area network (BAN). The Human++BAN platform effectively takes the IMEC ultra-low-power electrocardiogram sensors and allows them to be short-range wireless transmitters. Your heart rate (or some other metric) is being sent wirelessly to your cell phone, which can then work as a data hub.

This data can then be forwarded along to doctors or other medical professionals via a 3G or Wi-Fi connection as needed, as well as having the information available (via an Android app) on the phone itself. Should the phone app discover a spike in your heart rate, for example, it could sound an alarm and you could check your phone to see what’s happening with your body. If it’s not a heart attack, you can do what you can to slow down your heart rate and prevent that electric shock from kicking in.

The same idea can be applied to other “low-power medical sensors, such as electroencephalograms (EEGs) to monitor neurological conditions or electromyograms to detect neuromuscular diseases.” This sounds like a system that can offer a lot of promise for patient self-monitoring, as well as real-time data for their attending physicians and other medical staff.

Interestingly, instead of using an existing short-range wireless standard like Bluetooth, the system using a special nRF24L01+ radio developed by Norway’s Nordic Semiconductor. This sensor, which would presumably be implanted through surgical means into the patient, uses much less power to run continuously. It’ll send signals every 100 milliseconds for up to seven days at a time. If they went with Bluetooth, the same frequency would only work for about a day.

If that’s the case, it’d be interesting to see if a similar wireless radio could be used outside the medical context for our gadgets. Think about a Bluetooth-esque watch or something that connects to your phone, receiving text messages and other notifications from your mobile every couple of seconds.

Body organs can send status updates to your cellphone [New Scientist]

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GE has just revealed the GE VScan Portable Ultrasound and it’s exactly what you think it is: a portable ultrasound. Using this cell phone-shaped device, you can get a look inside the belly of any pregnant woman and show her the bun cooking up in her oven. GE won’t cover any lawsuits that may come as a result.

On a more serious note, this probably won’t be much of a preferred device for regular consumers, but it could come in really handy for paramedics, midwives, and other personnel who are constantly on the road. The ultrasound is not only for babies in the making, but also for fluid buildups around vital organs and so on.

Not surprisingly, General Electric isn’t dishing out much information for pricing or availability, but they’ll probably be connecting with local hospitals and doctors some time soon.

Source: Gadgetreview

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