Everyone is unique – and so is human anatomy. Thus orthopaedics or implantology call for medical products that provide a perfect fit and demand is high for one-off components, or small production runs. At the same time, the materials used and manufacturing standards applied must fulfil extremely stringent quality control. This also holds for specialised surgical instruments and medical devices,…
Electrospun materials bring a spark of hope to a cardiovascular landscape darkened by setbacks for reabsorbable stents. It was famously said that implanting a device in a person to cure a disease is to implant a new disease. Simply put, the human body will continually fight against foreign materials, leading to chronic inflammations or repeated interventions.
Which CRT patients can be ‘downgraded’ from a CRT-D device with defibrillator function to a CRT-P with just a pacemaker function? This, with two further current CRT issues – chronotropic incompetence and telemonitoring of CRT patients – featured prominently at the Europace-Cardiostim Congress in Vienna.
Columbia Engineers make major advance in helping the hearing impaired follow a conversation in a noisy environment - and bring cognitive hearing aids a step closer to reality.
Biotronik’s Home Monitoring is an award-winning remote cardiac monitoring system that automatically collects data from a patient’s cardiac device, enabling the physician to review cardiac function independently of in-office visits.
The association of biofilms with multi-drug resistance has highlighted the need for further understanding of biofilms and for anti-biofilm strategies.
Breast implants may impede an electrocardiogram (ECG) and could result in a false heart attack diagnosis, according to research by the European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA), a registered branch of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).
The implantation of knee and hip joints is considered one of the success stories of recent years. But periprosthetic joints infections (PJI) are one of the severe complications, with an infection rate of 2%. The probability of revision surgery increases with concomitant diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, with fracture prosthesis or after previous surgery.
Good news for World Antibiotics Day on November 18th. As local substances carriers, antibiotic-loaded bone cements from Heraeus help in the battle against implant-associated infections in orthopaedics and trauma surgery to prevent infection. This is demonstrated by a new randomised study from Great Britain in which the use of double-loaded antibiotic bone cement following femoral head fracture…
Complex bone fractures are often set with titanium or steel screws and plates. However, if these remain in the body for some time, they can cause health problems. A new bioceramic screw nail has the capacity of replacing the currently used metal components. It can be easily introduced into bone and does not have to be removed.
CarThera, a French company based at the Brain and Spine Institute (ICM), that designs and develops innovative ultrasound-based medical devices to treat brain disorders, announces the publication on initial successes in disrupting the blood-brain barrier (BBB) with the use of ultrasound. This has been achieved in association with teams from the Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris (the Greater…
An amputee was able to feel smoothness and roughness in real-time with an artificial fingertip that was surgically connected to nerves in his upper arm. Moreover, the nerves of non-amputees can also be stimulated to feel roughness, without the need of surgery, meaning that prosthetic touch for amputees can now be developed and safely tested on intact individuals.
Researchers from Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and EPFL, Lausanne have succeeded in restoring motor function following spinal cord injury. The researchers were able to show that coordinated muscle movement is the result of alternating activation patterns emanating from the spinal cord. Newly-developed implants, which use electrical stimulation to mimic these signals, were used to…
Studies are underway to determine if a new modular partial wrist replacement will allow for better movement and last longer than traditional implants for people seeking relief from painful wrist arthritis. Although current options such as total wrist replacement and wrist fusion can alleviate pain, patients are often limited in performing certain activities after surgery.
By implanting electrodes in the brain tissue one can stimulate or capture signals from different areas of the brain. These types of brain implants, or neuro-prostheses as they are sometimes called, are used to treat Parkinson's disease and other neurological diseases.
Whether for individual micro-implants or for micro-implants with medicine depots – additive processes are ideally suited for manufacturing such components. In the project “REMEDIS”, scientists at the Laser Zentrum Hannover e.V. (LZH) have established a highly automated laser melting process to produce or coat implants made of platinum, nickel-titanium (NiTi) or stainless steel.
When a patient receives a new hip, it is usually adjusted only approximately to leg length. Greater accuracy requires a more precise measuring process as well as adjustable implants. Now, a new type of measurement method coupled with a modular implant should allow orthopedic surgeons to precisely calibrate leg length after the operation so it matches its original length.
Prosthetic joint infections (PJI) are the most frequent complication in orthopaedic implant patients and may occur any time: weeks, months, or even years after an implantation. Report: Ludger Weß
A cardiac surgeon, Wolfgang Goetz MD once stitched together custom aortic valves in the operating room. Today he is CEO of Transcatheter Technologies in Regensburg.
French authorities have given the green light for continuing the clinical trial for the first fully implantable mechanical heart after a four-month review of the device and the causes of death of the first patient to receive the prosthesis
This summer the world’s first implantations of Biotronik’s new ICD and CRT-D series (implantable cardioverter-defibrillators and cardiac resynchronisation therapy defibrillators) took place at the Spedali Civili Hospital, Brescia, Italy.
In France, every year 15,000 women undergo complete or partial mastectomy due to breast cancer. Only about a third of them, i.e. around 5,000 patients, use the possibilities reconstructive surgery offers and 70 percent of those women opt for an implant although it is associated with a risk of infection because the body might react negatively to the foreign object.
The highly-anticipated and positive results from the IN-TIME study of home monitoring technology were recently presented in a hotline session at this year’s European Society of Cardiology (ESC) congress by coordinating investigator Professor Gerhard Hindricks MD, from the Heart Centre, University of Leipzig, Germany.
Shaken by two medical implant scandals, France is scrambling to rebuild confidence in its system of medical products and medication surveillance, John Brosky reports
Artificial hearts, originally designed to bridge the time on the waiting list for a heart transplant, in recent years have increasingly become an independent treatment option for patients with chronic heart failure (HF). Interview: Bettina Döbereiner