The surgeons took healthy nerves from the man’s body and used them to bridge the damaged nerves affecting his hands. The operation was performed at the Washington University School of Medicine, and the doctors hope that the operation could prove to be a breakthrough for people suffering from spinal cord injuries.

Once the new nerves were connected to the damaged areas, the man received extensive physical therapy. Eight months after the operation, he was able to move the thumb and fingers of his left hand, and after 10 months he was able to move the fingers of his right hand. Prior to the surgery, the man had limited movement in his arms, but lacked the ability to grasp or hold things in either hand. The man is now able to feed himself and write to a limited extent. Unfortunately, they cannot restoring truly “normal” function using this procedure. In this instance, for example, the man had to teach his mind to use a nerve that normally bends the arm and elbow to make the grasping hand movements.

[via Journal of Neurosurgery via Guardian]

Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center in California received several of the ReWalk exoskeletons from a donor. The center is treating paraplegics using the ReWalk to enable the patients to walk around freely. Using the exoskeleton, a paraplegic woman was able to climb stairs, get out of the car, and go to the restroom without any assistance at a pace similar to that of your average person.

The downside to these exoskeletons at this point is that the FDA has only approved the exoskeleton to be used in a hospital setting. The developer of the ReWalk devices is hoping the FDA will approve the use of the systems in the home. One day, rather than being confined to a wheelchair, people who can’t use their legs will be able to devices like the ReWalk instead. The company who makes the exoskeletons also hopes to produce a version for quadriplegics in future.

[via KLTA]

These flashbacks are one of the worst symptoms for many people who suffer from PTSD. Research team leader Dr. Emily Holmes concluded that when played soon after exposure to trauma, Tetris served as “a cognitive vaccine” that seemed to “inoculate against the build-up of flashbacks.” I guess in the future if you have a bad day and there something you would prefer to not recall, try playing some Tetris.

The study into using the game to treat PTSD followed 60 participants and exposed them to a movie showing scenes of injury and death. The participants were then divided into three groups. One of the groups sat quietly and did nothing, the other group took a computerized trivia quiz, and the third group played Tetris. The Tetris playing group reported fewer flashbacks according to the study. I’ve never been through anything like soldiers go through in the field, but it would seem to me being next people you know and care for who get gravely injured or killed would be much more likely to cause traumatic flashbacks than watching a movie.

I’m also not sure it would work for me if I had to be treated with Tetris because the game really drives me crazy at times.

[via Wired]

The machine is relatively lightweight at 7kg (approx. 15lbs.) including its battery, which can power the machine for up to 300 uses per charge. The machine will of course be a boon in emergency situations and in remote areas.

But the best thing about this machine is that, as YouTuber rubbermuck noted, it looks like something that the Ghostbusters would use. When there’s something strange, in your right boob, who you gonna call? The doctor!

[via DigInfo]

The surgery was performed at the University of Maryland Medical Center, and was paid for by the U.S. Navy as part of a program to develop techniques to help soldiers with facial injuries from combat recover. The surgery lasted 36 hours and gave Norris new teeth, nose, tongue, and jaw. Physicians say the man is now recovering well and has brushed his new teeth and shaved since the surgery.

As you can see from the photo above before and after the operation, the face transplant made a huge difference in the man’s appearance. Before the surgery, he lived as a recluse never leaving home. The doctor says that he’s also regained his sense of smell after the surgery. The surgery included transplanting nerves and underlying muscles as well. Norris will have to take anti-rejection medications for the rest of his life to keep his body from rejecting the transplanted tissues, but that’s a small price to pay for the amazing outcome of these modern medical efforts.

[via BBC]

Developed by engineers at Georgia Tech, the Tongue Drive System that lets the user control the chair with a dental retainer. Sensors are embedded inside the retainer that track the movement of a small magnet that is attached to the tongue using a tiny tongue piercing. Move your tongue and the chair moves.

The device is powered by a rechargeable lithium-ion battery and uses magnetic field sensors on four corners of the device to track the magnet’s position. The sensors then send the info to an iOS device which runs software which can control a cursor on a computer screen or turn it into a joystick for a wheelchair. They just have to work on better accuracy right now and once they get it, this will be an amazing tool for the disabled.

[via medgadget]

An 83-year-old woman needed a new lower jawbone last year for transplant and instead of a traditional implant, the medical team used a 3D printed jawbone manufactured by LayerWise. The transplant was carried out in the Netherlands last June and it has just now been announced. The implant was printed out of a titanium powder using a laser, layer-by-layer until the finished product was completed. The implant is a complicated part with articulated joints and cavities to provoke muscle attachment along with grooves to direct the regrowth of nerves and veins.

According to the team, it took 33 layers of titanium melted using the laser for 1 mm of height. That means that the finished jawbone had many thousands of laser passes. One of the interesting parts of the 3D printed jawbone is that it has a special double bridge that was attached and false teeth screwed in the that dental bridge. Also interesting is that the finished titanium jawbone weighs 107g, which is about one-third heavier than the replaced bone.

[via BBC]

If doctors at the offices around town had tricorders like Spock and the rest of the Enterprise crew, I might go. That is assuming it’s capable of diagnosing any issues in the intestinal tract without some sort of nasty invasive procedure. Then they could just do that scan thing and not have to poke or prod. Qualcomm wants some tricorder action too and it has teamed up with the X Prize people to offer a cool $10 million to the smart folks that can invent one. It’s going to be tough to do though. Here’s a description of the criteria for the tricorder:

“As envisioned for this competition, the device will be a tool capable of capturing key health metrics and diagnosing a set of 15 diseases. Metrics for health could include such elements as blood pressure, respiratory rate, and temperature. Ultimately, this tool will collect large volumes of data from ongoing measurement of health states through a combination of wireless sensors, imaging technologies, and portable, non-invasive laboratory replacements.”

Apparently, the way to make something like this work with today’s tech is by measuring metabolites. The catch is that the hardware needed to measure metabolites is inside a chunk of lab equipment about as large as a Mini Cooper. It looks like I’ll be avoiding the doctor for a few more years to come.

[via BBC]

And if you’re the type who sometimes eats dinner while you’re streaming some videos or surfing the Internet, then you know for a fact that your keyboard is filthy. Now for regular, healthy people like you and me, that might be okay. But if this keyboard is in a more sensitive environment, say a hospital or in some other medical setting, then it’s a huge no-no.

To answer the need for a truly clean and self-sanitizing keyboard is the Vioguard, which has now been approved by the FDA. The Vioguard has a proximity sensor that will eject the keyboard when there’s a human who will presumably type something close by. When it’s not in use, the keyboard will then be housed in a UV resistant receptacle where the keyboard will be exposed to a constant stream of UV light.

The Vioguard uses 80W when it’s sanitizing the keyboard actively, and 3W when it’s on standby. No word on pricing yet, but I have to say… Now this is neat.

[via MedGadget via Oh Gizmo!]

I doubt we’ll ever reach that stage, but the point is, time is valuable. Time is money. And time is something we all probably don’t have enough of.

So for the guys, there’s the e-Urinal. This thing will speed you up by checking your urinary health as you pee. The touchscreen fires up as you go, and you can just browse through the different menu and options by tapping (preferably after washing your hands.) So maybe it might also be a good idea to stick a mini sink in there somewhere.

The e-Urinal concept would measure the PH, SG, URO, BLO, WBC, PRO, GLI, BIL, & KET in your pee. That’s a whole lot of stuff, but basically, those are measures of your sugar levels, PH, and red/white blood cell count, among others. It could also store your history so you could check up on your trends over time (assuming you can remember which urinal you used.)

The e-Urinal was designed by Royce Zhang. It seems pretty cool, though it would be much cooler if he also came up with a female version. Hmmm.

[via Yanko Design]

If you’ve seen some of the hearing aids on the market, you’ll notice that most of them look plain and all business-like – just like medical stuff is supposed to. But I think something like the SoundsGood concept design for a fashionable-looking, yet multi-functional hearing aid is pretty cool.

As you can see, the SoundsGood was made to look like an earring with a narrow display in the part that dangles. Aside from adding to the overall aesthetics of the hearing aid, the display also lets whoever is speaking to you know if you’re talking too softly, talking too fast, or talking too loud by detecting the pitch of the speaker’s voice. The harmonious-looking blue and green waves are displayed if the person is speaking to you just right.

The SoundsGood was designed by Tang Peiqi and is a winning entry in the 2011 reddot design concept awards.

[via Yanko Design]

Now, the latest reason is that researchers are claiming that Wi-Fi radiation kills sperm. A team of scientists from Argentina found 29 guys willing to upload into a sample container for the study. Part of the sperm was placed under a notebook with Wi-Fi running and another sample portion was placed away from Wi-Fi at the same temperature.

Apparently, once the sperm was looked at under the microscope, 25% exposed to Wi-Fi signals were no longer swimming. The control group with no Wi-Fi exposure saw only 14% of the sample no longer swimming. Other scientists say that there isn’t anything to worry about yet. This is just one small sample, and an artificial setup, so it might not have any real world implications.

[via Reuters]

He’s perfect for hospitals and nursing homes, where he can monitor the elderly, maybe even toss them a lightsaber in a sticky situation. The bot also has a live conversation feature, which comes in very handy. At the proper time, he can simply remind patients when it’s time to take their meds. Emotions are expressed using a dot-matrix display on its head.

Right now this robot is part of a pilot project taking place in a hospital for seniors and nursing homes in Australia. It seems like a great design, even if he is a lot like R2 and it has all the right features. Check out more details here, where you can find tons of specs. This little guy could very well help some elderly patients. Just no tall golden sidekick please!

[via advancedtechnologykorea]

Engineers John Rogers and Todd Coleman have developed this tech. EES has electrodes capable of measuring brain, heart, and muscle activity, just like an EEG. It can then transmit this data wirelessly. The circuits stick to skin because they are extremely thin, and will adhere thanks to molecular forces. These circuits have been integrated without any pain, suffering or surgery, which is pretty cool. The circuits are applied just like a temporary tattoo. The wires of the circuits are elastic, so they can move about without breaking.

Soon, you will be able to integrate transistors, LEDs, photodetectors, RFID tags, capacitors and more onto your skin. Once these circuits get sophisticated enough, it could make interfacing with computers and our other electronic gadgets a lot different than how we do today.

[io9 via DVice]

Researchers have made a new breakthrough in memory for electronics that is inside a soft gel with the consistency of Jell-O. The soft memory is biocompatible and the body should not reject it if implanted. The new memory is also suitable to working in a wet environment such as the brain. The soft memory can’t store much data right now, but the researchers are tweaking it.

The material works by creating an oxidized skin when a positive charge is applied to the material. The skin prevents it from conducting electricity and makes it the “0″ needed for binary code. When a negative charge is applied, the skin disappears and it conducts electricity making the “1″ needed for binary code. The new discovery has a long way to go before it is ready for medical procedures on humans.

The patient had late stage cancer in his trachea with a tumor that continued to grow. There was no suitable donor trachea available so the docs at Karolinska University Hospital in Huddinge, Stockholm, by Professor Paolo Macchiarini, of Karolinska University Hospital and Karolinska Institutet, and colleagues grew and implanted the world’s first artificial trachea for the patient. The cool part is that since the artificial trachea was made from his own cells there was no rejection and no immunosuppressive drugs were needed.

The synthetic scaffold was seeded with the donor stem cells and then grown inside a bio-reactor for two days before being implanted into the patient. So far, there have been no complications after the surgery. The team also thinks that this procedure would be particularly important in the care of children since donor tracheas for kids are rare.

[via ScienceDaily]

If you don’t agree with me on that one, then you might want to take a look at the Hanako 2 Dental Robot.

Can the pretty girl say “ahh”, please?

The Hanako 2 Dental Robot, as its name suggests and implies, is meant to be used as a practice dummy for dentistry students. Pull her teeth out, give her a cleaning, examine her molars–it’s all entirely up to you.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The Hanako 2 is a far cry from its predecessor in terms of what it can do. This version of the dental robot can sneeze, blink, roll its eyes, open and close its mouth, cough, and even gag if you stick your fingers too far back into its throat.

And thanks to the robot’s development team collaborating with some sex toy makers, Hanako 2′s skin now feels more realistic and human.

[via DigInfo TV via Dvice]

There is another type of endoscope camera that is in a large pill that the patient can swallow. That would be much more comfortable than the long tube for sure. The catch is that the typical pill camera can’t be controlled and can only go where the muscle contractions inside the body take it. Some researchers in Japan have figured out a way to control that pill camera though.

They grafted a magnetic propulsion system that reminds me a lot of the old flick Innerspace onto the back of the normal pill camera. The capsule has a little tail that flips to propel it around the body. It can swim in the stomach and presumably crawl back up that colon rather than getting flushed too soon. The device is code named “Mermaid” which is lame. I would have went with “Bird of Prey” because then I could use that old “There are Klingons near Uranus” joke. The worst job in the research group would have the be the person in charge of retrieving the prototype.

[via Yahoo News]

The boy sold the kidney for 20,000 yuan (~$3087 USD). He said, “I wanted to buy an iPad 2 but could not afford it. A broker contacted me on the Internet and said he could help me sell one kidney for 20,000 yuan.” The boy did have the kidney removed in a hospital, but as it turned out the hospital wasn’t approved to perform the procedure.

The hospital said they had no idea that the surgery was being performed. The boy was approached by a broker on the internet about selling the kidney without his parent’s knowledge. The police are looking for the broker but have been unable to find him.

[via Shanghai Daily]

That is changing though, and the fire trucks in cities like Denver, Colorado are now being fitted with specially designed masks for giving the family pet oxygen. I am sure it won’t be long before we hear that a firefighter lost a nose to a dog attack while trying to administer oxygen. The masks have been around for years and are used by vets in their clinics.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Despite the fact that it’s a life-saver, that dog doesn’t look too happy to have that mask on his face. In fact if we could read doggie minds I bet he’d be thinking, “Hey wait a minute, the last time I had one of these on I woke up with no balls.”

It’s worth noting the masks were donated by the Invisible Fence company, as part of Project Breathe. You can contribute to the project here.

[via Gizmodo]