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."

Comments

So Trek's closing-wounds-with-beams thing is real?

[Michael_gr]

Now that is a surprise. That always struck me as funny, the way they just beamed at some wound and it closed.

The real news

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:The real news

[davester666]

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.

Re:The real news

[moteyalpha]

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.

Re:The real news

[Thiez]

> 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!

Optimal Temperature

[cjfs]

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.

Doesn't this invalidate

[Splab]

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.

The whole point.

[Surreal Puppet]

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?

Re:Incisions aren't similar; nonsense comparison m

[myxiplx]

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.

The end of natural

[tzot]

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.

What if...

[denzacar]

...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?

Re:So Trek's closing-wounds-with-beams thing is re

[trburkholder]

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.

65 Celcius melting point of skin?

[ZeroExistenZ]

they had to determine the optimal temperature at which flesh melts but can still heal (about 65 degrees Celsius)

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?

Re:65 Celcius melting point of skin?

[Dunbal]

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...

Great way

[Dunbal]

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"?

Re:Great way

[Dunbal]

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.

Good thing they mentioned the inventor

[synthespian]

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.