implant

Researchers at a New York-based institute said they have found a way to restore the sense of touch in a person who may have lost it due to an illness or injury. Scientists from the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research said the procedure requires an electrode implant in the brain. Their path-breaking research can potentially help millions of people who live with paralysis and neuropathy (nerve damage). Imagine a person not being able to feel the touch of another person. The condition also creates difficulty in…

US surgeons have successfully implanted a heart from a genetically modified pig in a 57-year-old man, a medical first that could one day help solve the chronic shortage of organ donations.The "historic" procedure took place Friday, the University of Maryland Medical School said in a statement on Monday. While the patient's prognosis is far from certain, it represents a major milestone for animal to human transplantation.The patient, David Bennett, had been deemed ineligible for human transplant - a decision that is often…

Researchers have developers a flexible implant capable of relieving pain in patients. In what could be termed as a game-changing discovery, the implant is a water-soluble and biocompatible device that can serve as an alternative to painkillers — eliminating the need for addictive medications. By wrapping around the nerves to provide cooling in the region, the implant can numb the nerve and block pain signals to the brain, bringing relief from pain. Users can activate the implant via an external pump, while controlling the…

Nobody wants to suffer physical pain if they don't have to, yet they also don't want to risk developing an addiction to pain-killing opioids. That's where a new drug-free implant comes in, as it reduces pain by cooling nerves.The experimental device is being developed by a team led by Northwestern University's Prof. John A. Rogers. It has already been tested on rats, with promising results.Made mainly of a biodegradable, biocompatible elastomer, the soft and flexible implant takes the form a thin strip which is 5 mm wide…

It was an early-career tragedy that inspired Australian neurologist Tom Oxley to work on a new kind of brain-computer interface.When Oxley was beginning his neurology training, he worked with a patient who was so diminished by a stroke that he couldn’t move anything but his eyes. The man—only 40, and the CEO of a company—made it clear that he didn’t want to live in his current “locked-in” condition. He wanted to die. So the doctors obliged him, doing nothing to fight off the stroke. They made him comfortable.“This was a…

A US medical team said Thursday they had reconstructed a human ear using the patient's own tissue to create a 3D bioimplant, a pioneering procedure they hope can be used to treat people with a rare birth defect.  The surgery was performed as part of an early-stage clinical trial to evaluate the safety and efficacy of the implant for people with microtia, in which the external ear is small and not formed properly.AuriNovo, as the implant is called, was developed by the company 3DBio Therapeutics while the surgery was led…