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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.
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.
First, they had to determine the optimal temperature at which flesh melts but can still heal (about 65 degrees Celsius).
I don't envy the test subjects.
sharks with friggin lasers on their heads?
I mean the poor thing is going to keep biting and not understand why the pray wont die.
Cauterizing lasers, for the conscientious shark.
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?
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.
Breasts, I mean. This is going to be heavily used to close incisions of breast augmentation surgery. We shall lose a weapon in our arsenal of 'true-fake' wars.
We are doomed.
I speak England very best
What kind of rod does one use for that weld?
That's actually a common misconception.
US foreign aid to Israel is limited to commodities purchased back from US companies: Israel cannot spend that money in any other way.
The money goes back to US companies like Boeing or Lockheed martin when Israel purchases fighter jets.
You can rest assured, that university research projects in Israel don't see a dime from US tax payer money. (Unless it's some US D.O.D joint effort)
Sigs are for the weak.
...they had lasers on the INSIDE beaming out when ever their flesh is pierced? You know, like having lasers in the blood.
How come Marvel didn't yet come up with such an awesome character?
Would such a combination make the character some kind of a weird Wolverine-Cyclops hybrid?
What would Jean Grey think about that?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
The foreign aid to Israel is given out since the US recognizes the strategic importance of Israel in the middle east - it is vital to promote US interests in the area.
And yes, the game is played both ways. Both US and Israel gain from the foreign aid - i just don't want people to think that the US is spending money in Israel without gaining anything from it. The US is not a philanthropic organization and Joe six pack is definitely not funding the Jews because they tricked him into it.
Sigs are for the weak.
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.
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
"Imagine that sort of device in the hands of your unscrupulous friends. They would sneak up behind you and seal your ass shut as a practical joke. The devices would be sold in novelty stores instead of medical outlets."
- Why real life will never be like star trek, The Dilbert Future, by Scott Adams
First of all, plenty of Christians have killed and will kill a non-believer. It's documented well, and countless times.
Funnily enough 10% of Jews in Israel *will* also stone your ass if you drive through a particular street on a Shabat, if you happen be Palestinian and live near certain settlers and if you dare to drive/eat/smoke in their vicinity on a Yom Kippur.
Believe me. I live here. The latter example actually took place in Akko recently. An Arab drove through Akko (which is an Arabic city), ended up on a Jewish street, got stones thrown at his car and subsequently *he* was arrested for it.
Then there are the boys who immigrate from Russia who get bullied into circumcising themselves at the age of 20 by their peers in the Army. That one's about brainwashing *and* self-mutilation as a consequence of it, and that's still done by the more secular Jews, that's not even the work of your 10% of orthodox fringe idiots.
Now my boy would be considered Jewish because his mother is an Israeli Jewess, so don't come to me and cry anti-semitism for what I've just pointed out either, please.
Having said that, I think the Christians should be very, very quiet about the Muslims killing those who are not Muslim because we all know what religion brought on the Spanish Inquisition, which hunts, the 100 year war, the Crusades and many other calamities that were aimed towards non-believers.
In 1987 George Bush Sr said an atheist can never be considered a citizen and an atheist can never be considered a patriot. Because this is one nation under God. And he got elected president. Twice. And then his son. Twice.
So please climb off that horse and shut up about the Muslims. Humanists and an atheists can say something about Muslims. Christians and Jews are just part of the same mob, however.
To instantly send the cost of that $7500 surgery to $15,000. After all, SOMEONE has to finance, maintain and insure that $300,000 laser machine because a $2 package of 3-0 nylon monofilament just won't do nowadays. Hey do we still have the machine that goes "bing"?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
hmm isn't that a modern way of the old heat a knife over a fire then burn the wound closed with the side of it like on movies?
I would imagine it's much less painful and leaves less of a scar.
hmm isn't that a modern way of the old heat a knife over a fire then burn the wound closed with the side of it like on movies?
I think the modern version of that would be using superglue. Both effective but fairly brutal & 'last resort'.
You can hate and love something at the same time, for different reasons.
Yes, that pretty much defines "marriage", I think.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Actually, superglue is quite effective at closing skin (though large wounds still need to have the deep layers closed). The monomers used are designed not to produce as much heat during curing as the home-use ones, but they're still cyanoacrylate adhesives.
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