The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted 510(k) approval to Fresenius Medical Care North America and Xenios, a Fresenius Medical Care company, for long-term use of its Novalung system for patients with acute lung failure or acute cardiopulmonary failure.
A University of British Columbia (UBC) researcher is part of an international team working with a biotechnology company on a pilot clinical trial of a potential new treatment for patients with severe coronavirus infections in China. Dr. Josef Penninger, director of UBC’s Life Sciences Institute and Canada 150 Chair in Functional Genetics, is working closely with Vienna-based Apeiron Biologics…
People who have been treated in intensive care commonly suffer from residual cognitive impairment, but the reason for this is unknown. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet now link cognitive impairment with lasting inflammation and a potential treatment target. The results are presented in the scientific journal Intensive Care Medicine.
The human immune system can recognize and eliminate not only germs but also cancer cells. This is why treatments with weakened germs can help the immune system in its fight against cancer. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin have genetically modified the tuberculosis vaccine BCG in a way that it stimulates the immune system more specifically. Consequently, the…
WHO Chief Adhanom Ghebreyesus has declared the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) a global health emergency. He said the decision was reached not because of the situation in China, but because of, “what is happening in other countries.” On Feb. 17, the number of infections totaled around 71,000 globally based on data of the WHO. COVID-19 – the official shorthand name of the novel corona virus…
More than half of all cancer patients undergo radiation therapy and the dose is critical. Too much and the surrounding tissue gets damaged, too little and the cancer cells survive. Subhadeep Dutta and Karthik Pushpavanam, graduate students working in the lab of Kaushal Rege, Professor at Arizona State University in Tempe, and collaborators at Banner-M.D. Anderson in Gilbert, Arizona, developed a…
Surgery for appendicitis is the most common emergency operation in children. A new study has found that the UK has the highest reported national rate of ‘normal appendicectomy,’ where children undergo surgery for suspected appendicitis but laboratory examination of the removed appendix finds it to be normal. Although most children who are misdiagnosed as having appendicitis improve without…
Supermicrosurgery – operations on vessels ranging from 0.3 to 0.8 millimeters – is limited by the dexterity of the surgeon’s hands. To bypass this limitation, robots can assist in the surgical process. One such robot is MUSA – the world’s first robotic platform for supermicrosurgery, which was co-developed by researchers from Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) and the TU/e…
The need to consider a formal recommendation on early screening for lung cancer was acknowledged by the Cross Party Group for Cancer, held at the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh in January. Attended by over 40 people representing patients, the medical community, and the pharmaceutical industry as well as political advisers and Members of the Scottish Parliament, the Group agreed to write to the…
Within the framework of an international study, Lund University and Skåne University Hospital have started treating patients with hemophilia with gene therapy, something that began in January this year. The hope is that the new treatment will significantly simplify everyday life for those with severe hemophilia. Hemophilia is a genetic disease where the body does not produce one of the clotting…
Robocath, a company that designs, develops and commercializes cardiovascular robotic systems for the treatment of vascular diseases, announces it has successfully completed its first robotic coronary angioplasties with R-One in Germany. The Percutaneous Coronary Interventions (PCI) were performed by Pr Michael Haude, a recognized and highly experienced interventional cardiologist at Rheinland…
Researchers at Cardiff University have discovered a new type of killer T-cell that offers hope of a “one-size-fits-all” cancer therapy. T-cell therapies for cancer - where immune cells are removed, modified and returned to the patient’s blood to seek and destroy cancer cells - are the latest paradigm in cancer treatments. The most widely-used therapy, known as CAR-T, is personalised to each…
A technique that enables patients suffering from heart conditions to hold their breath safely for over 5 minutes could have potential as part of a new treatment for cardiac arrhythmias, say researchers at the University of Birmingham. In a new study, published in Frontiers in Physiology, researchers initially proposed the technique as a new means for earlier diagnosis of ischaemic heart disease.…
Patients have come to expect a technician to drape their torsos with a heavy lead apron when they get an X-ray, but new thinking among radiologists and medical physicists is upending the decades-old practice of shielding patients from radiation.
How can the treatment of soft tissue sarcomas, these particularly resistant and aggressive forms of cancer, be improved and better personalized? An international team led by Wolf Hervé Fridman with researchers from Inserm, Sorbonne Université and Université de Paris at the Cordeliers Research Center, in collaboration with the French League against cancer and Institut Bergonié, has shown that…
Researchers from the University Hospital Zurich, ETH Zurich, Wyss Zurich and the University of Zurich have developed a machine that repairs injured human livers and keeps them alive outside the body for one week. This breakthrough may increase the number of available organs for transplantation, saving many lives of patients with severe liver diseases or cancer. Until now, livers could be stored…
Patients with colorectal cancer have a greater chance of survival if they are operated in hospitals with a high case load. This is because complications that can occur after surgery can be better managed there. Tumours of the colon, so-called colorectal carcinomas, are the second to third most frequent tumours in women and men in Germany. The surgical removal of the tumours is a central component…
Researchers at Lund University in Sweden have developed a new hydrogel based on the body’s natural peptide defense. It has been shown to prevent and treat infections in wounds. The formulation kills multi-resistant bacteria, something that is increasing in importance with antibiotic resistance growing globally. “The ability to effectively heal wounds is key for our survival in evolutionary…
Doctors have used focused ultrasound to destroy tumors in the body without invasive surgery for some time. However, the therapeutic ultrasound used in clinics today indiscriminately damages cancer and healthy cells alike. Most forms of ultrasound-based therapies either use high-intensity beams to heat and destroy cells or special contrast agents that are injected prior to ultrasound, which can…
Using a computer algorithm, scientists at Uppsala University have identified a promising new treatment for neuroblastoma. This form of cancer in children, which occurs in specialised nerve cells in the sympathetic nervous system, may be life-threatening. In the long term the discovery, described in the latest issue of the scientific journal Nature Communications, may result in a new form of…
Modern healthcare without hand hygiene? Inconceivable – particularly in the operating room (OR). But what happens when it is not the surgeon who handles the scalpel, but a robot? Robotic surgery, just like surgery performed by humans, always carries a risk of microbial transmission to the patient, says Professor Johannes K-M Knobloch of University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE). A specialist…
The Protestant Hospital Wesel (EVK Wesel) is one of two reference centres in Germany and one of 25 worldwide for the Senhance Surgical Robotic System from Transenterix. ‘We wanted to be the first in the Lower Rhine region to go to market with a robotic system as we believe that this type of digital surgical assistance represents the future,’ explains Rainer Rabsahl, CEO of the 356-bed…
An exciting development from an innovative French company is poised for a major breakthrough in European markets. As is now well-known, coronary angioplasty is a procedure that widens and/or unblocks the arteries to the heart by the insertion and inflation of a balloon and/or stent into the vessel lumen. In modern practice, a stent is normally left in place to ensure the blood flow remains…
Periprosthetic joint infection (PJI) is on the increase internationally. In Germany, for example, around 14,500 cases of PJI in hip and knee replacements occur annually. 5,100 of those are caused by multidrug resistant pathogens. ‘Eighty-seven percent of those affected die within five years,’ orthopaedic surgeon Professor Rudolf Ascherl MD pointed out during the Heraeus Symposium held at the…
War wounds sustained by frontline soldiers or civilians usually need urgent, specialist, trauma surgery. Over the last two decades much has been learned from injuries sustained during conflicts in, for example, Afghanistan and Iraq. In early June, during a Catastrophe and War Wound key session at the European Wound Management Association conference in Gothenburg, specific remedial approaches to…