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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."
Now that is a surprise. That always struck me as funny, the way they just beamed at some wound and it closed.
The whole point of this new method is that you can cauterize a wound without charring the flesh, instead just melting it. The optimal temperature for this is, apparently, 60-70 deg. C., and this is maintained using feedback from an infrared sensor on the "soldering pen". They apparently also use a water soluble protein as "solder". The scars on in the TFA pictures look real nice. Wonder if the wound will hurt more or less than a conventionally sealed wound?
Cuz that's what medics want to carry. A large battery pack with a small laser, while humping a guy back to the aid station. Or maybe a gas generator.
Hell, it could be dual use. As a weapon, it can blind enemy combatants or slice open their skin, but when the enemy gets closer, you bend over a wounded comrade and claim to be a medic, and that it's your laser scalpel/magical healing device.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
You are right on that. My sister was doing laser cellular reconstructive surgery ( Transoral Laser Microsurgery ) 12 years ago with a Neodymium Yttrium Arsenic Garnet ( Nd YAG ) 100 watt continuous laser. Here is a link to that laser created in 1964. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nd-YAG_laser. I would have RTFA, but it was slashdotted already. I still think if a shark did it, that would be news.
> Hmm... conflict is an essential part of evolution.
Maybe, but war isn't. Many bacteria and plants and herbivores happily live their lives without ever being at risk of being killed by their own kind. A 'war' against others of your kind is something very few species do (I guess ants can be considered an exception).
Let's not use 'evolution' as an excuse for war. Even if war was part of evolution, the whole thing that defines us humans is that we can mostly ignore what would happen in nature.
> The illusion, that we can do without conflicts (which sometimes end in wars), comes from the illusion that there is one global truth, when in reality, everything is relative.
If we have two countries whose citizens have exactly the same culture and beliefs about the world, when country A wants something from country B and country B won't give that thing to A, there is a conflict. So even with a 'global truth' people will have conflicting interests.
Personally I believe there is such a thing as a universal truth, and science is creating increasingly acurate theories about this truth. The problem is that many people (myself included) have misconceptions about this truth, and incomplete knowledge, and, most importantly, consider their culture to be part of this truth.
> What we must realize, is that, no matter how disgusting and strange the views of others look to us (if you want an example, think of a group, where it is generally accepted to rape everybody you see, and then eat him), as long as they do not hurt anyone (eating someone of that group, who thinks that way too, is not hurting someone), we have no right so tell them what to do.
Fair enough, but in this particular example it might be best to inform these people about 'our' culture so they can make a choice. And what about a culture that abuses a particular group (let's say, women) and believes that anyone who tries to leave their culture must be tortured and killed? Or a culture wherein it is not allowed to learn about other cultures?
> That's why I oppose something like big countries and world governments: Because, if you disagree, there is no place you could go to anymore.
I don't see the problem with big countries, if many, many people have the same culture, they should be able to live in one (big) country. I agree a world government would suck, though. Even when it had very little power over its people, governments tend to slowly take more and more power without giving it back.
> Before I realized this, I thought, a world government where everything is peaceful, would be an ideal. In theory: Yes. In reality, there is no such thing, as long as there is evolution.
Stop the evolution thing, please. Evolution is never a cause of things, it is the result.
> Oh, and if we must have a world government, then at least I want to be the leader. ;)
My vote goes to cowboyneal!
Firstly, 65C, isn't that the just above the heat of a warm bath, and doesn't a sauna reach up to 110C ? Second, since when does a skin melt?
Who can give some more indepth information about this?
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Gladly, they mentioned the inventor Abraham Katzir (a physicist at Tel Aviv University).
All too often, it''s the surgeon who gets all the credit when, in fact, all this wonderful medical technology is created by engineers and whole team - a lot more people than the guys who like to pose as heroes.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts