Stem Cell Treatment Cures a Paralyzed Dog

A six-year old dog called Henry injured his back badly a year ago, after falling down the stairs. He suddenly stopped walking and lost the sense in his legs.

Henry became emotionally depressed, and couldn’t do the normal activities he use to do before. But state of the art medical intervention restored Henry’s senses and started to walk again after only one month of his surgery. How amazing is that?

Despite all the debates about the ethical uses of stem cells, it showed that its a promising way to repair damaged tissue, restore cellular function, and relief from suffering associated with many disabling disorders.

Cells were harvested from inside the back of the nose – as these special cells are capable of supporting the growth of new nerve fibers -in March and injected back into his spine after four weeks and Henry took his first steps one month later. The procedure was carried on by Professor Nick Jeffery and Professor Robin Franklin at Cambridge University.

Henry’s owner, Sarah Beech, 34, from Birmingham, said: “It is incredible, I didn’t think Henry would ever walk again, but over the last few months he has been wagging his tail and taking steps.

Surgical Robot Find Tiny Shrapnel Without any Human Help

Biopsy is a small surgical procedure to extract a living tissue from your body for medical testing for suspected diseases such as cancer. There is several different type of biopsy, and each one of them has its own technique. But what brought my attention today is a new robot surgeon that successfully found and guided a needle to a sliver of steel shrapnel, completely without human help.

According to Duke University where the experiment was performed, this new technology will reduce the cost of Biopsy and reduce the time as well.

“Eventually you could have a ten-dollar biopsy done inside in a supermarket” said Steve Smith, a doctor at Duke University and co-author of a paper describing the work in the journal IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control. Discovery Channel Report

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The U.S second partial face transplant performed

A leading U.S hospital performed successfully the nation’s second partial face transplant.

The procedure took place at Brigham and Women’s Hospital on a man who suffered sever injuries to his face during a car accident. The man couldn’t’ eat, smile or effectively interact with people.

“It’s really difficult to live without a major part of the face — the social interactions, the ability to eat, drink, the ability to talk — all those are severely impaired.”

The operation took around 17 hours and included seven surgeons led by Dr. Bohdan Pomahac.

The hospital press release didn’t mention the donor name or identity, but the plastic surgeons were able to identify a good donor for the patient to match tissue characteristics and approximate age and skin color.

“It takes a lot of time to inset the facial part, make sure that the bony structure fits, that the nerves are connected, the skin is trimmed, of course, the whole graft remains well-perfused,” Pomahac said.

Doctors are a little bit concerned from body rejection to the new organs, but until now the patient is in a stable condition and everything is going well.

Source - CNN Health

The first of its kind operation shoulder constructed from elbow

Doctors in the U.K preformed the first of its kind surgery where they used muscles and tissue from a patient’s unaffected elbow to create a new shoulder after it was amputated after a cancer at Leeds General Hospital in England.

Tom Lemm, 15, from Pontefract, lost his left arm after suffering from cancer “a tumor” at the top of the limb. Tom’s surgeons said that they removed the whole arm and shoulder, and then used the elbow joint and tissue from the arm to reconstruct a shoulder joint. Professor Kay told the BBC: “The most awful thing for an upper limb reconstructive surgeon to do is to remove an arm – it’s a dreadful thing to do.

“But by using the bits that would be discarded, you can pluck a little bit of comfort.”
He said Tom’s new shoulder will be able to support an artificial limb. “This will be a tremendous advantage.” BBC

Tom told the sun’s newspaper “I was very upset at losing my arm but then the prof told me what he planned to do.

“I hope the fact it has worked for me gives others hope.”

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