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Joining Blood Vessels Without Sutures
Med-trump writes "Stanford microsurgeons have used a poloxamer gel and bioadhesive, rather than a needle and thread, to join together blood vessels. The technique, published in the recent issue of Nature Medicine, may replace the 100-year-old method of reconnecting severed blood vessels with sutures. According to the authors of the study, 'ultimately, this has the potential to improve patient care by decreasing amputations, strokes and heart attacks while reducing health-care costs.'"
According to TFA a major part of this is the use of a polymer that solidifies when heated but dissolves when it cools down. It is striking that we can not only have such weird substances but can have such substances that are also reasonably ok inside humans (that is, not poisonous and not triggering an immune response). The main advantages of this method is that it is faster than the normal method and that it can be applied to much smaller blood vessels. According to TFA, suturing is extremely difficult if not outright impossible for blood vessels that are smaller than 1 milimeter wide. The basic type of polymer has been used in various forms before to deliver drugs, so while this version is a modified version, it is unlikely that any very serious problems will crop up. Overall, this will be helpful in for both planned and emergency surgeries and should help reattach limbs and digits much more effectively. Right now when a finger is removed reattachment is a difficult process that often just fails. This should change that.
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Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
It's not the glue that is novel in this application, but the use of a poloxamer gel to keep the vessel shape while attaching the ends.
Imagine trying to glue together the open ends of two tube socks. It would be time consuming to line up the ends and not glue the other side together, etc. This technique is like putting a solid round canister inside the junction of the two tubes, making it very quick to line up the edges and glue them together.
In this case the canister is a cylinder of poloxamer gel that is solid when warmed above body temperature. After the connection is glued, the gel cools and liquifies, leaving a perfectly glued joint.
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If that were true then it would require that most people would have to see chiropractics. But lifespan has increased across the board even as only a small fraction of people go get chiropractic treatments.
Here's a better question: When was the last time chiropractice came up with a new treatment that helped heal a disease or problem they couldn't otherwise? Science does this all the time. Small pox and polio, once terrifying diseases, are diseases of the past. Diabetes, once a death sentence, is now manageable. Fifty years ago, childhood leukemia was a death sentence. Now, it is a horrific disease which permanently damages children, but often they live. And the death rates are still declining http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5648a1.htm. A hundred years ago, severe liver disease was a painful way to die. Now, we have liver transplants.
This is what real science and real medicine do. They improve. They work. They develop and test new treatments. And when a treatment doesn't work we throw it out. This process is slow, and comes in fits and starts. But the pattern of progress is clear. So again, what have the chiropracticts or the homeopaths or the Reiki fan done? What diseases have they cured? What insights into the nature of humans have they found? Did they find DNA? Did they unravel the genetic code? Did they discovery the many things RNA does in a cell? Instead they've stuck with hundred year old beliefs and kept parroting them.
All of these fringe beliefs have a variety of things in common: they each claim to be able to cure almost everything. The Reiki practitioner can cure any disease by manipulating the energy fields. The chiropracter can cure and prevent any disease by removing toxins" and subluxations. But that's not how the real world works. In the real world, there is no magic bullet. The human body is a wondrously complicated awesome thing. And so different diseases have different causes, not the same causes. And so different problems require different solutions. There's nothing easier when confronted with a massive collection of hard problems to convince yourself that you can solve all of them with a single trick. But that's not how the world works.
Unfortunately for you Dr. Bob, it is extremely unlikely that you will let any of this sink in. You have spent a massive amount of time and resources preaching your beliefs to the world. Humans have a tremendous amount of time admitting when they are wrong even over little things. In your case, the long amount of effort will likely make the cognitive dissonance much too severe for you to even question whether potentially part of your belief system might be wrong. And that's sad. But, you've put yourself in that position. You are the only one who can take yourself out of it.