#surgery

#surgery

Modern Surgery is More of a Miracle Than You KnowIn the grand scheme of things, the largely successful medical operations performed today are a miracle. It wasn't all that long ago that surgery was a last-ditch act of desperation for patients, and a legal risk for those who performed them, people who sometimes had rather little education in what they were doing. Medical student Michael Denham tells us some high and low points in the history of surgery as he works through his surgical rotation. The four big challenges in developing the art of surgery through history have been 1. anatomical knowledge, 2. controlling the bleeding, 3. blocking pain, and 4. avoiding infection. An astonishing number of patients suffered and died as surgeons experimented and learned to deal with each of those challenges. And often they had to fight to even get the chance to try. For example, the Code of Hammurabi stated that a surgeon whose patient died would have his hands cut off. When Galen taught about anatomy in the second century, human dissection was illegal, so all he knew was learned from animals. In medieval Europe, the only person to turn to for surgery would be a barber. Read how surgical techniques advanced despite a lack of knowledge and a poor reputation at Nautilus. -via Damn Interesting (Image credit: SSgt. Derrick C. Goode, U.S. Air Force)#history #surgery

Having Trouble Breathing? Could be a Tooth Growing in Inside Your Nose!Uh, yikes.Mount Sinai surgeons discovered a tooth growing inside an unnamed 38-year-old New York resident’s nose. The man visited a doctor after having trouble breathing for several years. Initial examinations revealed that the patient’s septum (the partition between the nasal passages) was pushed to the side. In order to actually find the cause of this issue, a rhinoscopy was done. Oral and maxillofacial surgeons Sagar Khanna and Michael Turner then discovered a shocking anomaly inside the man’s nose– a tooth was growing inside! The patient had a 15-millimeter ectopic tooth, an exceedingly rare condition. This involves the teeth sprouting up in the jawbone under the gum rather than in the mouth. The doctors were able to remove the lost tooth and three months later, the man’s breathing problems were resolved. Image credit: Jam Press via The New York Press #tooth #surgery #ectopictooth

MIT Engineers Developed Sticky Medical Dressing that Works Like a Surgical Duct Tape to Seal Internal WoundsInternal wounds are tricky business, especially when they involve gastrointestinal injuries and carry the risk of leaking gut bacteria to other tissues in the body.Xuanhe Zhao and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have discovered a dressing that solves this issue. This special dressing is degradable, transparent and acts like a duct tape. It is sticky on one side and forms a flexible hydrogel that molds onto the shape of the wound and helps it heal. It is essentially an adhesive wound dressing that works well in the wet environment of the internal body.The dressing has proven to help gut wounds heal faster and better in rats and pigs. Zhao and colleagues published their findings inScience Translational Medicine. They hope to develop a similar dressing for use in humans via their newfound company SanaHeal.#InternalWounds #DuctTape #Medicine #MedicalDressing #surgery

Robots Successfully Performed Surgery Without Any Human HelpLaparoscopy (also known as keyhole surgery) is a procedure performed in the abdomen or pelvis. Compared to open surgery which involves making large incisions, laparoscopy is less invasive and less painful. This is made possible thanks to the laparoscope (the camera inserted in the tiny incisions. However, this procedure is much more difficult from the surgeon's perspective.Fortunately, it seems that doctors don't need to do complex surgeries such as this one in the near future, as robots will do it for them.One such robot is the Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot — STAR for short. According to The Guardian, scientists say that this robot performed "significantly better" results than humans.Now, this is a medical breakthrough.(Image Credit: Johns Hopkins University/PA)#Surgery #Medicine #Laparoscopy #KeyholeSurgery #robot

Women are More Likely to Die if Their Surgeon is MaleA study out of the University of Toronto compared surgical outcomes by the gender of patients and the gender of the surgeon. They found that for male patients, on average it doesn't matter whether the surgeon is a man or a woman. If you are a woman surgeon, your male and female patients are likely to have equivalent outcomes. But for a woman patient, the gender of the surgeon can make a difference. They found that women patients are 15% more likely to have a bad outcome with a male surgeon as compared to a female surgeon, and are 32% more likely to die if their surgeon is a man. The study was done by analyzing records of 1.3 million patients using nearly 3,000 different surgeons. A bad outcome was defined as post-surgical complications, readmission to the hospital within a month, or death. They included 21 types of operations, from appendix removal to brain surgery. For example, in brain and vascular surgeries, 1.2% of women who had a male surgeon died, while women who had a female surgeon saw only a 0.9% death rate. While that may seem like a small percentage, it's a significant difference. While the percentages vary, the difference in a woman's surgeon held across all types of surgery. While the researchers cannot pinpoint the reason for the difference, they offer some possibilities in an article at the Guardian. And they issued a call for more women to be trained in surgery. -via Damn Interesting(Image credit: Samuel Bendet, US Air Force) #surgery #gender #medical

Inspired by McDonald's Efficient Fast Food Operation, This Indian Hospital's Cataract "McSurgery" Restored Eyesight to Millions of PeopleA network of hospitals of the Aravind Eye Care System carries out around 500,000 surgeries a year while providing free services to those in need. The efficient network of Aravind got its inspiration from the highly effective assembly line model of McDonald’s.Govindappa Venkataswamy, the doctor who set up Aravind, said after learning the economies of scale of fast-food chains, “If McDonald's can do it for hamburgers, why can't we do it for eye care?"More than a quarter of the world’s population suffers from vision impairment, and about a half of it is preventable but untreated according to the World Health Organization. In India, around 10 million people are blind and about 50 million are suffering from visual impairments, with cataracts being the predominant cause.The model used by Aravind proved to be a success with its wide reach in India. An example of a recipient of the hospital’s free services is Venkatachalam Rajangam. "I thought the operation would be for an hour but within 15 minutes everything was over. But it didn't feel rushed. The procedure was done properly," he said after the “Mcsurgery”.Images: Arun Sankar/AFP#eyes #surgery #McSurgery #India #cataract #McDonalds

Woman Charged $11 for Crying During Mole Removal ProcedureIf you have surgery scheduled sometime soon, make sure that you are mentally and emotionally prepared for the event. You wouldn't want to cry during the surgery, as it might cost you more on your bill. Of course, you might think that this is impossible and that no clinic or hospital on Earth would do such a thing. But this happened to a woman named Midge. When she looked at her bill for her mole removal surgery, she found that she was charged an extra $11 for showing "brief emotion" — for crying during the operation. Midge's post went viral on Twitter, gathering over 190k likes and over 15k retweets. The tweet also received lots of comments, with one noting that doctors do this "to pad bills to increase revenue." (Image Credit: @mxmclain/ Twitter) #MoleRemoval #MedicalBill #Surgery #Weird

'Mia' the Bearded Vulture Got a New Foot and Became the World's First Bionic BirdIn a large bird such as a bearded vulture, the loss of a limb is often fatal as the animal's inability to walk or fly would lead to death due to malnutrition.So when 'Mia' the bearded vulture injured its foot when it got tangled in sheep wool it tried to use to build a nest, the bird's future looked bleak. Thanks to bionic limb reconstruction specialist Oskar Aszmann and his team at MedUni Vienna, however, Mia can walk again with two feet. Aszmann has been working on surgical techniques to attach bionic limbs for humans in a procedure called 'osseointegration,' where the prosthesis is directly connected to a bone anchor to ensure a solid skeletal attachment. Now, for the first time, he and his team have managed to apply the technique to an avian patient."The bird made the first attempts to walk after just three weeks and the prosthesis was under full load after six weeks. Today the bearded vulture can once again land and walk using both feet, making it the first ‘bionic bird’," said Aszmann in a statement.Image: S. Hochgeschurz, O. Aszmann et al/Nature#bird #bionic #BionicLimb #foot #surgery #osseointegration #beardedvulture

First Surgical Implant of Total Artificial Heart in the USAA team of surgeons at Duke University Hospital has successfully implanted a new-generation commercially-available total artificial heart, the first of such achievement in the USA. The patient was a 39-year-old man who suffered a heart failure.The Aeson artificial heart was developed by French company CARMAT, who obtained FDA approval in the USA to enroll patients with end-stage biventricular heart failure for a study.  The artificial heart uses biological valves derived from bovine tissues and operates on an external power supply.CARMAT’s artificial heart is designed to provide a temporary device for patients waiting for heart transplant surgeries. “Because of the shortages of donor hearts, many patients die while waiting for a heart transplant,” said transplant surgeon Jacob Schroder, who led the implant procedure. “We are hopeful for new options to help these patients, many like [the patient] who have devastating disease and cannot otherwise be considered for a transplant.”#heart #surgery #transplant #hearttransplant #transplantsurgery #artificialheart #CARMAT