Implants & Prosthetics

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Once implanted, coronary artery stents to prop open blood vessels usually remain in place for the rest of the patient’s life. The longer a stent is in place, the greater the risk of late-stage side effects. That's why researchers are trying to develop a bioabsorbable stent, one that will gradually and harmlessly dissolve after the blood vessel is healed. Studies have investigated iron stents, which can rust, and magnesium-based stents, which dissolve too quickly. So, researchers at Michigan Technological University, Houghton, are trying something different—zinc.

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The American Orthotic & Prosthetic Association (AOPA) launched its "Coalition to Walk and Run Again," an effort to aid uninsured and under-insured victims of the April 15th Boston Marathon terror attack. The bombing killed 3 people and left more than 200 injured, several of whom lost portions of their legs as a result. Those who have or are undergoing amputations will be provided major assistance with the cost of their initial prostheses and related care, the group stated at a telephone press conference on April 30.

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Many medical implants use hard materials that connect to or pass through soft body tissue. This mechanical mismatch can lead to problems like skin breakdown at abdominal feeding tubes in stroke patients and where wires pass through the chest to power assistive heart pumps. So researchers at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, are looking to a squid's beak as the model to make medical devices safer and more comfortable.
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Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, are developing edible electronic devices that can be implanted in the body, and say that the device could be programmed and deployed in the gastrointestinal tract or the small intestine and once the battery packaging is in place, they can activate the battery.

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Around 17 million people in Germany suffer from impaired hearing. A new device being developed at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation (IPA), Stuttgart, Germany, can, researchers say, improve patients’ hearing and can be implanted during outpatient surgery. Hearing aids are a must for the almost one in every two people over the age of 65 in Europe whose hearing is poor. For those with severe hearing impairments, hearing can only be helped by an implant, which amplifies sounds more effectively than conventional systems and boasts better sound quality. But, middle ear implants require complex surgery lasting several hours, with high risk, and high costs.
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Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, with the support of a $3.4 million National Institutes of Health grant, are working to develop an artificial lung to serve as a bridge to transplant or recovery in patients with acute and chronic lung failure. The project aims to develop a compact respiratory assist device called the Paracorporeal Ambulatory Assist Lung (PAAL), a wearable, fully integrated blood pump and lung designed to provide longer-term respiratory support up to three months while maintaining excellent blood compatibility. This is in sharp contrast to current long-term breathing support modalities, which include extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (EMCO)—a cardiac and respiratory technique in which blood is drained from the body, oxygenated, and the returned to the bloodstream, but can significantly limit a patient’s mobility and involve unwieldy equipment.
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Prosthesis automatically adjusts gait, incline, and heel height.

Human gait is an infinitely variable and complex feedback system to maximize efficiency and stability in movement. Typical prosthetic technology utilizes fixed springs to maximize energy return but do nothing to adapt to the variable environment experienced by users. The Magellan microprocessor foot/ankle (MFA) system, developed by Orthocare Innovations, utilizes sophisticated, patented control schemes based on real-time force feedback loops to increase efficiency and optimize a real world gait.
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A team of scientists at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), one of the two Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology, have developed a tiny implantable device that can analyze the concentration of up to five proteins and organic acids in the blood simultaneously, and then transmit the results directly to a doctor's computer.

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Longtime cochlear implant users are reporting dramatic improvements in their hearing, thanks to new image-guided programming methods developed by researchers at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN. Using a patent-pending nonsurgical process, audiologists can fine-tune and customize cochlear implant programming, providing improved sound quality and clarity.

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A team of neuroengineers based at Brown University, Providence, RI, has developed a fully implantable and rechargeable wireless brain sensor capable of relaying real-time broadband signals from up to 100 neurons in freely moving subjects. Several copies of the novel low-power device, described in the Journal of Neural Engineering, have been performing well in animal models for more than year, a first in the brain-computer interface field. Brain-computer interfaces could someday help people with severe paralysis control devices with their thoughts.
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Researchers at the North Carolina State University, Raleigh, have successfully coated polymer implants with a bioactive film that, they say should improve the success rate of the implants, typically used in spinal surgeries. The polymer contained in these implants, called Polyetheretherketone (PEEK), tends to not bond well with bone or other tissues in the body, which can result in the implant rubbing against surrounding tissues and can lead to medical complications including the need for additional surgeries.

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A team of bioengineers and physicians at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, have created an artificial external ear, using 3D printing and injectable molds, that looks and acts like a natural ear. This could give new hope to children born with a congenital ear deformity, or to those who have lost all or a portion of their ear in an accident or from cancer.

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Researchers at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL and the University of Illinois have demonstrated a stretchable lithium-ion battery can power their innovative stretchable electronics. The stretchable electronic devices now could be used anywhere, including inside the human body, they say, powering implantable electronics that could monitor anything from brain waves to heart activity. They say that they have demonstrated a battery that powers a commercial light-emitting diode even when stretched, folded, twisted, and mounted on a human elbow. The battery can work for eight to nine hours before needing recharging, which can be done wirelessly.

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A new space-age material creates a prosthetic foot that’s built to last.

Formerly used only in the aerospace arena, Flexeon is a radical departure from the rigid carbon fiber materials found in most prosthetic feet. It’s a specially- formulated reinforced fiberglass material that is nearly indestructible, extremely flexible, and available exclusively on Ability Dynamic prosthetic devices, such as the RUSH™ foot. Flexeon underwent thorough and extensive testing for flexibility, material strength, and durability in prosthetic labs, as well as on patients aged 21 to 69 in clinical trials. The results of these tests and trials revealed that this high-tech material is three times more flexible than carbon and much more durable than current standard carbon fiber products.
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The Florida State University, Tallahassee, and its High-Performance Materials Institute are leading a major partnership to develop the next generation of prosthetic limbs for military-veteran amputee patients, thanks to a new contract with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The two-year, $4.4 million VA Innovation Initiative (VAi2) project is aimed at addressing the shortcomings of current prosthetic socket systems by developing, testing, and delivering "Socket Optimized for Comfort with Advanced Technology" (SOCAT) prototypes.

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University of California-Irvine neuroscientists have developed a unique method to stop severe episodes of epileptic seizures with fiber optic light signals. Using a mouse model of temporal lobe epilepsy, the research team created an EEG-based computer system that activates hair-thin optical strands implanted in the brain when it detects a real-time seizure. The fibers subsequently “turn on” specially expressed, light-sensitive proteins called opsins, which can either stimulate or inhibit specific neurons during seizures. They found that this process could stop ongoing electrical seizure activity and reduce the incidence of severe events.

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A team of engineers at Duke University, Durham, NC, are layering atom-thick lattices of carbon with polymers to create unique materials with a broad range of applications, including artificial muscles. Because of its unique optical, electrical, and mechanical properties, graphene is used in electronics, energy storage, composite materials and biomedicine. But, it is difficult to handle because it has a tendency to “crumple,” which makes it difficult to control.

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Survival climbs, risk of unnecessary shocks plummets

A new study at the University of Rochester Medical Center Rochester, NY, shows that defibrillators, which are designed to detect and correct dangerous heart rhythms, can be programmed to help users live longer, better lives, than they currently do.
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The Ada-based SPARK programming language and toolset offer strong guarantees about the behavior of software systems. This powerful core underpins Echo, a complete approach to practical formal verification developed at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, by Dr. John Knight and his student, Xiang Yin. Echo extends the verification power afforded by the SPARK tools and the PVS Specification and Verification System to provide a complete proof that a given SPARK implementation re fines its formal specification.
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A team of researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, say that they have created the world’s first implantable robotic arm controlled by thoughts. Prosthetic leg technology has advanced rapidly in the past decade, but prosthetic arm advances have been much slower. Since the 1960s, upper limb amputees have used prostheses controlled by electrical impulses in the muscles.

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Recently, researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine, Baltimore, MD, surgically implanted a pacemaker-like device into the brain of a patient in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, the first such operation in the United States. The device, which provides deep brain stimulation and has been used in thousands of people with Parkinson's disease, is seen as a possible means of boosting memory and reversing cognitive decline.
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Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta; the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa; and Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, announced a four-year joint project to develop a below-knee prosthesis capable of actively powering the ankle joint powered by a gas- or liquid-based propellant. Electric prostheses have several significant limitations. Since batteries have a limited energy density, those using a prosthesis with an electric motor must recharge the unit on a regular basis. By using a propellant, an individual may get several days’ worth of power from one fuel canister.
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Bioengineers at Tufts University School of Engineering, Medford, MA, have demonstrated that silk-based implantable optics can enhance tissue imaging, administer heat, deliver and monitor drugs. In addition, the devices are biodegradable and biocompatible, harmlessly dissolving at predetermined rates and require no removal surgery.

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Creating a custom breast prosthesis that feels and looks more natural can be accomplished.

Breast cancer is a terrible affliction that affects approximately one in eight women in the US. In 2012, nearly a quarter- million cases of invasive breast cancer will be diagnosed among women. Due to the progress of medicine and associated treatment, the death rate associated with breast cancer has been declining since the 1990s to approximately 1 in 36 cases. At this time, there are more than 2.6 million breast cancer survivors in the United States alone. Different procedures can be attempted in order to treat and cure a cancer but the more advanced cases will sometimes need to undergo a complete mastectomy (a procedure in which a breast is removed entirely). A mastectomy is a rather radical procedure and some women may experience a post-surgical trauma due to the lifestyle disruption following the surgery.
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Speed equates to cost, so faster prototyping and production mean lower costs and faster time to market. Although this statement seems to be fairly easy, there are some considerations to make when thinking of additive manufacturing, also called 3D printing, where a three-dimensional object is created by laying down successive layers of materials from a digital model. Rapid prototyping has become an all-encompassing term for the use of a class of technologies to construct physical models using computer-aided design (CAD) data. This is exactly why medical device companies are exploring the use of a variety of types of additive manufacturing to help cut prototyping and production costs. Here’s a look at some of the different additive processes available, their materials, applications, and some design rules to keep in mind when designing for manufacturability.
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