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Surgeons Weld Wounds Shut With Surgical Laser
Ruach writes "The promise of medical lasers goes beyond clean incisions and eye surgery: Many believe that lasers should be used not just to create wounds but to mend them too. Abraham Katzir, a physicist at Tel Aviv University, has a system that may just do the trick and is proving successful in its first human trials."
As usual, the summary misses the interesting bit. Using lasers to seal wounds is old news - I first read about it in the Readers Digest about a decade ago. What's new here is a mechanism to prevent overheating.
No, TFA shows two sample pictures, and TFA didn't do any comparison at all, especially not any based on these particular pictures. The *doctors* compared wounds on ten patients and decided that the laser-bonded scars were healing better, which is what the article reports.
The point of the pictures isn't so *you* can second guess the doctors (who believe it or not know an awful lot more about this than you do). They are there to give a quick visual impression of what's going on, to complement the real detail contained in the text of the article.
If you really want to double check the results, go find the original research paper. However I think you'll find it's rather longer and not quite so interesting to read.
From TFA:
"All a surgeon has to do is move the pen's tip along the cut, strengthening and sealing the weld with a solder of water-soluble protein."
It looks a lot like very controlled cooking and I suspect the protein used to connect the tissue denatures in the process. It's not welding, it's hot-melt glue.
Still very cool.
Have you ever burnt yourself on the stove or something? Then you'd know that skin melts.
65C is way, way, waaaaay above the temperature you'd want in a warm bath and while the air temperature is 110C in a sauna your skin never reaches that temperature, if you stayed in the sauna long enough your skin would melt though(I think you'd die first)
Second, since when does a skin melt?
Skin isn't just the rigid layer of dead cells covered in keratin that you're used to seeing. Lots of interesting things happen under the basement membrane in the "extra-cellular matrix". Cells aren't just glued to each other but rather they produce and surround themselves with different proteins - some for rigidity and others to allow flexibility and elasticity.
This matrix becomes more fluid at higher temperatures as the proteins unwind and change shape with the heat. The theory is that if you have two pieces of matrix close enough to each other and increase the temperature, some of the proteins from either side of the wound will entangle with the opposite side, and remain entangled when the temperature is lowered again, kind of like velcro on a molecular level. The trick is to provide just enough temperature to get the proteins to entangle with each other, without putting so much temperature that they end up destroyed.
Anyway surgeons have known about cauterization for a long time. It helps fix all those little mistakes (oops who put that artery there...). There's nothing more fun than watching a bleeder turn into a brown and black bubbling mess of protein goo - but goo that no longer bleeds.
It would be interesting to know how this "new" technique holds up under different conditions - sepsis, metabolic disorders like diabetes, etc. And of course how much trouble is the patient in if ever there's a dehiscence? At least with sutures, the other sutures are there to keep the wound reasonably closed...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
George Bush Sr was president for one term. Also, the past does not justify the present. If people are being killed simply because they don't share a faith they are still BEING KILLED. It doesn't matter that roles may have been reversed 50, 100, or a thousand years ago, that is done and gone. Everyone should complain and complain loudly regardless of their faith. So please climb off that horse and realize that this is about people and we all have equal rights to complain Christian, Atheist, Musilm and Jew.
Nothing is anywhere near as cheap as $2.
It is when I buy it for my clinic. Syringes, 15, I sell them to you for $1.50. Suture, around $1.75 each pack last time I bought, and I sell them to you for $15. That's what happens when I have to pay between $20k and $60k a year (depending on the specialty and how many times I have been sued) in malpractice insurance premiums before covering other, simpler costs like "rent". You can thank the "jackpot justice" players and ambulance chasing lawyers for that.
Oh, I guess you could buy your own sutures for $1.75 but no, "This item is restricted for sale only to or by order of a physician". Sorry.
Of course be careful at hospitals, they sometimes rip you off in illegal ways, like charging you for a whole box of medication when all they gave you was one pill. Always check your bill. I do.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
65C is 149F, which is too warm for a bath, I think. 110C is 230F, which is cooking temperature. As is pointed out in other postings, sauna exposure is not the same as water immersion, nor direct radiant exposure, but still very hot. I will keep my meltable skin away from both temps.