WeirdMedical™

NASA…no need to say more.

Some of the most weird and heart-warming stories of 2010…

Mother’s touch revives premature twin pronounced dead…

“Kangaroo Cuddle”

Afghani teen receives nose transplant in California…

Afghani Teen Harmed by Family

All 33 Chilean Miners Survive Ordeal…

All Chilean Minors Survive

…and seven more…

Thank you, AOL, TIME, LWA, AP, Getty Images & Youtube.com!

A marriage of science, art and remarkable skill…

Dr. Larry Over, DMD, MSD, a maxillofacial prosthodontist in Eugene, OR,  rebuilds a mother’s face.

Building a new face

See the American Medical Association’s site at amednews.com for the amazing reconstruction…read on…

Who of us in the medical industry would have the guts to give a neurosurgeon permission to have our infant’s brain glued?

According to the authors – “It was just a few months before the parents noticed Joley’s head was growing rapidly and was unusually larger than [her twin's] Jared’s . Her mother could see the tiny veins in Joley’s head bulging out from her scalp.”

…But crazy glue worked!

Image of glue in Ella-Grace Honeymans brain

Got to love N-butyl-cyanoacrylate…read more at HealthMad.com…

Number ten in the Top 10 new tech advances of 2010 goes to an ancient material…

Implanted under the skin, an array of light-emitting diodes could signal the concentration in the blood of biomarkers such as insulin. Over time, the array will dissolve away, eliminating the need for surgery to remove the implant. Flexible silicon electronics (inset) are held in place with a silk film. Incorporating antibodies or enzymes into the film will allow devices to detect biomarkers. Credit: Bryan Christie Design. Source: MIT's Technology Review

According to MIT’s Technology Review, such “dissolvable devices make better medical implants.”

And what is that mysterious yet familiar bioabsorbable material for advanced implantable electronics­?

Silk!  It can be engineered to transmit images via light waves along its fibers, deliver drugs, measure vital signs or test blood, and can be resorbed over hours or as long as two years depending upon how long it is needed. And all from the belly of a worm? Amazing. For more amazing apps…read on.

Got silk?

You-Tube video of Jonathan’s Cochlear Implant Activation 8 mo., Rt Ear cont\\’d – April 14, 2008

Beautiful Baby Boy

“Experts have discovered that an extract from the white flower commonly known as Baby’s Breath can boost the efficiency of anti-cancer drugs by a staggering million times,” stated on the British MailOnline website by its Healthcare Section editors.

Apparently this staggeringly significant discovery was made by scientists working for the charity, Leukaemia Busters, based in Southampton, Hampshire. The scientists extracted the molecular substance called saponins from the Gypsophila Paniculata plant. Saponins appears to break down the membrane of cancer cells leaving them vulnerable to antibody-based drugs, known as immunotoxins. Immunotoxins can then more easily attack and kill the cancerous cells.

Baby's Breath Flower Million Star

Leukaemia Busters name and its logo were both devised by Simon Flavell the son of the researchers, Dr David Flavell and his wife Dr Bee Flavell. Drs. Flavell run the charity that was set up in memory Simon who died from the disease aged 10. Simon was a great fan of Ghost Busters.

To learn more about this dedicated research team and their findings read on…

Now this is a good use of our federal tax dollars…

In the northwestern reaches of Washington (D.C. that is) sits a museum that is a “must see” if you like the slightly off-taste, arcane, twisted and in some cases, down-right gross medical oddities. Visit the bricks and mortar “Roadside America of American medicine,” the National Museum of Health and Medicine, America’s oldest taxpayer-funded Cabinet of Curiosities near Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

A row of little skeletons.

At the National Museum of Health and Medicine you can see precariously displayed and disturbingly barely described:

• hanging display of a complete brain and spine, suspended in liquid in an eerily lit glass cylinder
• girl’s head preserved in arsenic
• well-preserved hairball from the stomach of a 12-year old girl who compulsively ate her own hair
• skull with a huge civil war bullet buried in its frontal lobe
• and the list goes on…

To visit…virtually go to the RoadsideAmerica.com Team Field Reporters or National Museum of Health and Medicine, or in real life visit:

6900 Georgia Avenue, Washington, DC

Hours:     M-F 10 am – 5:30 pm, Sa, Su, Hol call ahead

No kidding. This is for real – so when you go to the NMHM in D.C., tell them you want your tax dollars’ worth!

Welcome home Discovery and the STS-131 mission crew…we’ll miss you and the shuttle program:

Space Shuttle Landing –> Video: Discovery reaches Earth after delay

Images from NASA Discovery page

Space shuttle Discovery is seen from the International Space Station shortly after undocking Saturday, April 17, 2010. (NASA TV)

How exciting for all us techies!

Here’s to Mars?

If you are struggling for therapeutic relief from multiple sclerosis, you’ve got a lot of competition…

An new investigational procedure using an old “Gold Standard” technology is causing MS patients to apply in droves for a single site clinical trial. Over 1,000 patients applied for 3o positions at a lone study site in Buffalo, New York in its early trial. And the technology?…Is it a drug or an active agent?…no…it’s “POBA” –> Plain Old Balloon Angioplasty!

The theory of balloon angioplasty’s anticipated success in this new indication for use? This  provocative new theory proposes that abnormal blood drainage from the brain may cause or play a role in multiple sclerosis. According to early studies by an Italian vascular specialist, Dr. Paolo Zamboni, who was running out of treatment options for his wife, poor deoxygenated blood drainage caused by twisted, narrowed or blocked cerebrospinal veins may cause “leakage of immune cells into the brain that starts a cascade of inflammatory problems.” In this venous application, balloon angioplasty opens these vessels to increase the volume and rate of drainage…and patients can not wait to receive treatment.

“A lot of people are starting to go to fly-by-night places,” according to Dr. Carlo Tornatore at Washington’s Georgetown University Hospital. “It’s a marathon, not a 100-yard sprint. We have to be very careful.” (Source: Seattle PI, Seattle, WA)

The indication is chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency or CCSVI. Further studies of 65 patients by Dr. Zamboni reveal this therapy may be most effective in treating the relapsing-remitting form of MS. But there appears to be a significant relapse rate nearly 50%, similar to that for POBA for coronary arteries in the 1980′s and 1990′s.

Stay tuned…this opens a whole new opportunity for peripheral vascular device manufactures as well as their new MS patients!