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Implants used to monitor bodily functions or to provide drugs would advance personalized medicine, but there is an inherent problem—the human immune system recognizes the device as an invader and encapsulates it, preventing the device from working properly. To combat this problem, researchers at the...

In a first-of-its-kind operation in the US, a team of doctors at Duke University Hospital, Durham, NC, helped create a bioengineered blood vessel and transplanted it into the arm of a patient with end-stage kidney disease. The procedure was the first US clinical trial to test the safety and...

Researchers at The Ohio State University, Columbus, say that their technology is closing in on creating low-cost electronic devices that work in contact with inside the body, and that their first planned use of the technology is a sensor that will detect the very early stages of organ transplant...

In the past 13 years, more than 2,000 service members have suffered amputated limbs. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA’s) research with advanced prosthetic limbs controlled by brain interfaces is well documented, but such research is currently limited to quadriplegics....

Combined with state-of-the-art micro-sculpting techniques, a new resin holds promise for making customized electrodes for fuel cells or batteries, as well as biosensor interfaces for medical uses. A rabbit sculpture, the size of a typical bacterium, was one of several shapes created by a team of Japanese...

A body at sea is vulnerable to hypothermia, which often leads to loss of life. Hypothermia is caused by the differences between the core body temperature and the surrounding air and seawater temperatures. The greater the differences between the body core...

The American Orthotic & Prosthetic Association (AOPA) launched its “Coalition to Walk and Run Again,” an effort to aid uninsured and underinsured victims of the April 15th Boston Marathon terror attack. The bombing killed 3 people and left more than 200 injured,...

According to a new study conducted in controlled laboratory conditions, sensors that pick up the rhythm of a beating heart in implanted cardiac defibrillators and pacemakers are vulnerable to hacking. In experiments using simulated human models, an international team of researchers demonstrated that...

Ever since he was six weeks old, an Ohio infant with a condition called tracheobronchomalacia would stop breathing because part of his windpipe carrying air to his left lung would collapse, requiring emergency assistance. But, thanks to a team of doctors and engineers at the University of Michigan,...

Scientists at the University of Washington, Seattle, have created a synthetic substance that can fully resist the body’s natural attack response to foreign objects. They say that devices such as artificial heart valves, prostheses and breast implants could be coated with this polymer to prevent the body...

Lauded for safety, ease, and patient convenience, peripherally inserted central catheters (PICC) lines have become clinicians’ go-to for intravenous (IV) delivery of antibiotics, nutrition, chemotherapy, and other medications. But, compared to other central venous catheters (CVCs), PICCs more than double the...

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...

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...

A new 3-D motion detection system could help identify baseball pitchers who are at risk for shoulder injuries, according to a new study by scientists at the Loyola University Medical Center, Maywood, IL. The laptop computer-based system can be used right on the field.

At the 245th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, in New Orleans, scientists from the University of California, San Diego, described their advances in micromotor technology that, they say, could open the door to broad new medical uses.

Researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), Cambridge, MA, have developed an inexpensive tactile sensor for robotic hands that is sensitive enough to enable a machine to handle objects with sensitivity and dexterity. Designed by researchers in the Harvard Biorobotics Laboratory,...

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,...

Researchers say that a new type of soft material they have created by using a unique 3D printer connects thousands of water droplets, 50 microns in diameter each, encapsulated within lipid (fat) films, which can perform some of the functions of the cells inside our bodies. These printed “droplet networks,” they say...

A new study done at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, Baltimore, MD, described online in JAMA Pediatrics, show that in children catheters inserted in a vessel in the arm or leg and not threaded into a large vein near the heart are nearly four times as likely to dislodge, cause vein inflammation, or...

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...