16
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July 2014 | Read this issue and more at www.healthandwellnessmagazine.net |
in the
By Angela S. Hoover, Staff Writer
Doctors Can Now 3D-Print
Blood Vessels
Doctors at Boston hospital have
perfected the process of artificial
vascularization using 3D bio printers
and biomaterials to create the first
synthetic blood vessels. Unlike other
3D-printing successes with tissues and
organs, making delicate conduits from
scratch seemed too complicated to pull
off this soon since blood vessels are
incredibly fragile things that perform
crucial functions. Blood vessels are by
far the most delicate thing synthetically
bio-printed to date. The results and
process were published in the journal
Lab on a Chip in late May.
FITGuard Knows If a Hit
Could Cause a Concussion
Anthony Gonzales and fellow Arizona
State University alum Bob Merriman
developed a mouth guard that indicates
when a blow to the head is serious
enough to cause a concussion. The
FITGuard has a green LED strip on the
front that turns blue when it detects
a medium force impact and red when
there’s a blow strong enough that there’s
a more than 50 percent chance for a
concussion. Gonzales and Merriman
have already received several thousand
dollars in grant funding and have begun
software development and produced
several prototypes.
OpenNotes Movement:
Patients Want Easy Access to
Doctors’ Notes
Some patients and health care
professionals believe being able to see
what doctors are writing about patients
can empower and include them in their
health, and eliminate miscommunication
errors. Tom Delbanco, professor
of general medicine and primary
care at Harvard Medical School has
spearheaded the use of OpenNotes,
along with registered nurse and Harvard
Medical School researcher Jan Walker.
Delbanco said he thinks it is a mistake
for doctors to hide from patients what
they think and feel about them, and
that there’s no reason for a patient to
not know these things. OpenNotes has
grown from 13,500 patients to 3 million
in the United States in 18 months.
German psychoanalyst and psychiatrist
Andreas Feher uses OpenNotes despite
the debate of its application in mental
healthcare. Feher said he finds it strange
that other professionals, including those
not directly involved in the case, can
potentially read some of his notes but
the client or patient cannot. Although
patients in the U.S., the U.K. and
Germany have a right to access their
medical records, it is a bureaucratic
process with rules that make it difficult
for medical or mental clinicians to
simply show their notes to patients,
which OpenNotes hopes to remedy.
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HIV as a Weapon to Fight
Other Diseases?
Danish Aarhus University researchers
are looking into harnessing HIV
particles as a new way to treat hereditary
diseases, and even the virus itself. Thus
far, both negative and positive results
have been shown at Medecins Sans
Frontieres-Holland (AZG)’s clinic in
Yangon. The researchers have succeeded
in altering HIV particles to repair human
genomes in a process called the “hitand-run” technique. It works by “cutting
and sticking” in the human genome