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For the 30% of clinically depressed people who don’t respond to medication, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently approved a new, noninvasive treatment option. With NeuroStar TMS, a wand held over the head delivers highly focused magnetic pulses to a part of the brain linked to depression. A typical course of treatment would involve 40-minute sessions at a psychiatrist’s office five times a week for four to six weeks. In two clinical trials, roughly half of patients said that their symptoms were reduced by at least 50%.

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Surgeons at a clinic in a Cleveland, Ohio, have performed America’s first almost-total face transplant.

The reconstructive surgeon in charge of the operation - Dr. Maria Siemionow - replaced 80% of a woman’s face with that of a dead female donor.

The patient’s name and age have not been released.

The Cleveland transplant is only the fourth to be carried out. Two operations have been conducted in France and one in China.

The world’s first face transplant took place in France three years ago, on Isabelle Dinoire, a woman who had been mauled by her dog.

Surgeons used donor tissue to replace her nose, mouth, lips and chin.

Two other such operations have been carried out since then - one on a Chinese farmer who was mauled by a bear while trying to protect his sheep, and the other on a French man who had become disfigured by a genetic condition.

Doctors in Cleveland said the operation had been carried out two weeks ago and they would release more details on Wednesday.

After the procedure, all patients have to take medication for the rest of their lives, which suppresses their immune system to prevent the transplanted skin being rejected.

The new face does not look like the donor because its shape is altered by the muscles and bones of the patient’s face.

Source: BBC

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A prototype of a therapeutic ultrasound device, developed by a Cornell graduate student, fits in the palm of a hand, is battery-powered and packs enough punch to stabilize a gunshot wound or deliver drugs to brain cancer patients. It is wired to a ceramic probe, called a transducer, and it creates sound waves so strong they instantly cause water to bubble, spray and turn into steam.

Tinkering in his Olin Hall lab, George K. Lewis, a third-year Ph.D. student in biomedical engineering and a National Science Foundation fellow, creates ultrasound devices that are smaller, more powerful and many times less expensive than today’s models. Devices today can weigh 30 pounds and cost $20,000; his is pocket-sized and built with $100. He envisions a world where therapeutic ultrasound machines are found in every hospital and medical research lab.
“New research and applications are going to spin out, now that these systems will be so cheap, affordable and portable in nature,” Lewis said.

Ultrasound is commonly used as a nondestructive imaging technique in medical settings. Sound waves, inaudible to humans, can generate images through soft tissue, allowing, for instance, a pregnant woman to view images of her baby. But the higher-energy ultrasound that Lewis works with can treat such conditions as prostate tumors or kidney stones by breaking them up. His devices also can relieve arthritis pressure and even help treat brain cancer by pushing drugs quickly through the brain following surgery.

Lewis suggests that his technology could lead to such innovations as cell phone-size devices that military medics could carry to cauterize bleeding wounds, or dental machines to enable the body to instantly absorb locally injected anesthetic.

Source: Science Daily

A brand new process that could revolutionise the reliability and durability of surgical implants, such as hip and knee replacements, has received recognition for its medical and commercial potential by achieving one of the world’s most sought after accolades. A team of researchers, led by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), has received a Medical Futures Innovation Award for its high technology process designed to coat surgical implants with fibres that, for the first time, will encourage the implant to ‘bond’ with living bone and to last the lifetime of the patient.

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Researchers at the Harvard Medical School will be publishing details in the November 28 edition of Cell of a potential mechanism of aging that is conserved throughout the animal kingdom, from yeast to humans.

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