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French Doctors to Perform Zero-Gravity Surgery
STFS writes "NewScientistSpace has a story about a team of French doctors who will attempt the worlds first zero-gravity operation on a human aboard an Airbus A300 dubbed "Zero-G". The patient, according to forbes.com, was chosen because of his experience with 'dramatic gravitational shifts' as an avid bungee-jumper. The operation will serve as a test for performing surgery in space."
... I predict some serious mishaps for all involved. The Vomit Comet is a NASA plane which they use to simulate 0G conditions by the simple expedient of taking the plane up really high and then flying it towards the ground, then pulling up and repeating. As I recall the cycle between weightless and "really freaking heavy" takes about 60 seconds, with about half of that time being weightless. Any more and the plane ends up as NASA's 453rd "premature interface of craft and planet". So the surgery would be stopping and starting constantly, and as most surgeries aren't five-minute affairs I can imagine that would be a little irksome.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
I bungy-jumped a couple of weeks ago and can't remember experiencing any dramatic changes in gravity. It was pulling me towards the ground for the entire jump.
I sure hope it isn't a vasectomy.
Pornography is ahead of the curve on technology use.
From the TFA: "The European space plane, a specially-adapted Airbus A300 operated out of Bordeaux, flies in a series of roller-coaster like parabolas, creating between 20 and 22 seconds of weightlessness at the top of the curve, a process repeated around 30 times for a 3-hour flight.
As well as the challenge of working in zero gravity, the surgical team will have to halt their work each time the plane pulls out and gravity resumes."
22 seconds multiplied by 30 is 660 seconds, that is only 11 minutes of surgery for 3 hours. I wonder if that tumor could be removed during this 3 hour session.
(I'm getting dizzy already, I'm not a rollercoaster type of person)
I am a doctor, and this is the worst type of medicine: publicity medicine. The goal is to get on the news rather than patient care. If these guys really wanted to experiment (and it is an experiment) with low-gravity surgery they would be doing it on animals long before human trials. With surgery, there are so many complications that cannot be predicted. Who knows how low-gravity affects clotting? Perhaps this guy will have a pulmonary embolus and die... there are a million what if's here that be accounted for and it's irresponsible at the least.
And we wonder why medical costs are getting so out of hand. =)
Good news Mr. Brown, we removed the tumor! Followed by, "We're going to have to put you under again because your liver floated away."
I wonder what they will do for the Zero-G counterpart to suction, usually on Earth, gravity holds the blood at the base of the operating platform (usually the back) and they have a suction tube designed to remove the blood that gets in the way.. In Zero-G however, the blood may be flying all around the cabin, how would they contain the blood flying around?
Did anybody else immediately think of that Zero G porn film from a few years ago?
Like I did?
I'll get my coat.
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What will the patient be like after returning to gravity?
I seem to remember that in the development of the X-ray a lot of people were treated for depression of the organs, or some such illness, which later turned out to be something that was caused by the machines taking the photographs, and only caused when the photographs were being taken in the first place. Peoples' organs weren't actually in the wrong place, they were being displaced by the heavy equipment, until the equipment went away again...
I can imagine a situation where they do the operation, then land, and find that when the body of the patient settles, the stitches pull out or the organs get twisted around and he has worse problems than he would have had if they'd stayed in a relatively constant gravitational pull.
Let alone the increases and decreases of gravity during the operation. "catch that kidney as it goes past, will you nurse? Oh, nevermind, it will change direction and return to it's rightful place in 5 more seconds..." Wow. It would be like a Monty Python sketch...
Sounds like removal of a "lipoma". (I've had a few of those removed.)
Think of it as "cancer of the fat" - except benign. You get stiff fatty lumps (maybe one, maybe a scattering, maybe like a bunch of grapes). They're like regular fat with some kind of other tissue in them that makes them hard.
It's really annoying if it's above a muscle or some other easily hurt tissue: It's like a rock embedded in the fat that is SUPPOSED to be cushioning the tissue, so lying on it bruises the tissue instead.
They never go malignant so doctors will leave them in unless they're bruising something underneath or causing a disfiguring bump. They're near the surface of the skin so they're easy to cut out - usually by a dermatologist.
Sounds like the perfect test operation. Not a big deal if they don't get it all, near the surface so you don't have to cut through vital stuff or clamp stuff out of the way to get to it, etc. Easy to tell how well the op went. Much less opportunity for screwups than just about any other surgery.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
How unethical? How unecessary. If you actually took the time to read the story, you see that the guy is a VOLUNTEER. This type of research, on VOLUNTEERS, is a necessary thing if we are ever going to learn how to perform emergency procedures in microgravity. To compare this to a NAZI death camp is immature, irresponsible, and just plain ignorant.
TFA mentions an accident during a low spaceflight. Well, read Baxter's "Titan" for example. But if you are not suicidal enough for that, it might be enough to note that all space crews are trained in medicine; often one crewmember is a doctor, and everyone else is good enough to help.
Another issue is that you can't compare 30-second drops and 9-minute climbs, with gravity swinging from 0 to 2G, and a quiet, stable zero gravity of a spacecraft. Who can do *anything* well in a Vomit Comet? This stunt has no value.
It's not like this is rocket surgery or anything.
A lipoma is benign, however they can undergo malignant transformation - just like any tissue in the body. Generally the small (5 cm and deep to the fascia ( a gristly layer over the muscle) tend to malignantly transform and should be excised.
,the bad ones tend to be firmer and look funny on MRI.
Dermatologist generally don't do cancer operations - they take out skin lesions a bit at a time untill they hit healthy tissue. If something is deep to the skin - i.e. a lipoma, it should be removed by a surgeon (general, or orthopaedic) that specialises in oncology. The only real way to determine if they are benign is to examine it pathologically. Generally the benign ones tend to be soft,
..........FULL STOP.