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Using Sound Waves For Outpatient Neurosurgery
eldavojohn writes "Got a piece of malfunctioning brain tissue in your head? Want to avoid messy lobotomies and skull saws? Well, you're in luck; a study shows that acoustic waves can do the trick and will hopefully treat patients with disorders like Parkinson's disease. A specialist said, 'The groundbreaking finding here is that you can make lesions deep in the brain — through the intact skull and skin — with extreme precision and accuracy and safety.' They focus beams on the part of the brain needing treatment and it absorbs the energy, which turns to heat. The temperature hits about 130 F, and they can burn 10 cubic millimeters at a time. Using an MRI to see areas of heat, they can watch the whole time and target only what needs to be burned. The study consisted of nine subjects suffering from chronic pain that did not subside with medication (normally they need to go in and destroy a small part of the thalamus on these patients). After the outpatient procedure, all nine reported immediate pain relief and none experienced neurological problems or other side effects after surgery."
Could this be used on other parts of the body for cancer and such? Since the brain does not feel pain, you would have to use some kind anesthetic on other parts of the body.
You are logically correct. However, you would never get real people to go along with such a system because people quickly go illogical when their own lives, or the lives of loved ones are on the line. We are much more likely to have a healthcare system paid for by a preset percentage of the economy, the size of which will be quite large.
--why?
and now my ice cream thinks trees are precisely why shoe laces bark the 1812 overture spatula rice mommy.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
I concur. Chances are that this new kind of acoustic brain surgery will sooner be cheaper than a ticket to a Metallica concert.
Which is appropiate, since both have the potential to damage your brain
No sig for the moment.
Try taking ethics. If we followed your slippery slope logic we'd start killing people when they hit retirement age. After all, they'll never again go back to work and 'pay back' their value after they start collecting social security. Same for the mentally retarded, just drown them right?
"Realistically we need to start realizing that not every person DESERVES the best treatment". And who decides that?
New procedures are always expensive, do you think the first x-ray machines were worth the cost to say "yup, you got a broken leg son". Now they are standard practice.
"so costly that society can never regain that investment". Public education is costly, if a kid isn't learning and behaving by second grade should society perform a retroactive abortion? After all without an education they'll just be a burden on society, and its not worth paying for the education if they aren't being productive, why not save the money for the other years of school?
Did you have a 4.0 GPA in school? what about college? How much are you contributing to society now? I'm not so sure I am getting back my investment in you. Most of the education system in the world are funded by tax dollars.
What about no child left behind? Why don't we get real efficient and just let them starve? They'll never pay enough in taxes to 'regain investment'.
Actually, as a researcher in the field, controlling cost is one of the motivations behind this method.
Do you have any idea how much open brain surgery costs? It's several days in the hospital, plus a team of surgeons, plus an operating room. All in all, from $50,000 to $200,000. High intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) doesn't need any of that. There are hopes this could almost be an outpatient type of procedure.
One my childhood friends suffered from epilepsy for many years until as a teenager, he had exploratory brain surgery (in 1988) where they removed a cubic centimeter of diseased tissue. He was in the hospital for a week.
Not every new idea in medicine costs more money.
Currently, all brain surgery consists of excising something, implanting something, or making a lesion in something. We do not have the ability to make a repair on anything in the brain. The best we can do is find the part that is malfunctioning and kill it off so it at least won't interfere with the rest.
What this does is avoid the whole drilling holes in the skull part and the infection risk that goes with it.
As someone who lives with chronic pain, let me say you are so far off the mark.
I do respond to medication, but the only pain-killers that work are very heavy - Fentanyl.
I haven't had a full time job for many years. I never will without advances in the treatment of pain. If a procedure like this may mean I can work again, and pay taxes. Then I can afford expensive medical insurance.
More importantly, my kids then have a Dad who works full-time. They see that working leads to reward. They see that working hard at school can lead to a better life. At the moment my 16 y.o. sees no point in trying, as life can throw a curve ball and fuck you over. So if I could get something closer to a "normal" life, my kids will see me modelling better work-ethics and will be more likely to emulate my success. They see there's a point to trying to achieve their level of personal excellence, earn more money, pay more taxes and have more productive and potentially happier lives.
That's 6 people now pay more taxes.
Now I'm a maths teacher by vocation. If I was able to teach full-time I would be able to show several hundred kids a year that maths is easy, maths is fun, and that they can use it to solve real problems in everyday life. A few of these kids will go on to do amazing things, just because I can do what I am good at doing, and I can do it well. Over say 20 years there would be a significant number of people who have happier lives, earn more money and pay more taxes.
That's say 300 people now pay more taxes.
It's been shown in the literature that children of professionals are significantly more likely to undergo tertiary study and become professionals. So the children of the kids that were inspired to greatness by having a great teacher are more likely to have happier, more productive lives with higher paying jobs.
So there are potentially thousands of people who are paying more taxes, who are making great discoveries, and are generally happier, just because my pain is better managed without putting knives inside my head.
Look past the short-term benefits to the individual, and look at the potential returns to society and humanity as a whole, and the pay-off of a (admittedly) expensive procedure becomes enormous. And the return to the individual who suffers otherwise incurable chronic pain is not something measured in $$. To not wake up crying because I didn't die in my sleep would bloody marvellous. It's the possibility that there will be advances that help me that has kept me from suicide, and I'm not Robinson Crusoe.