CLEVELAND (AP) — A woman so horribly disfigured she was willing to risk her life to do something about it has undergone the nation’s first near-total face transplant, the Cleveland Clinic announced Tuesday. Reconstructive surgeon Dr. Maria Siemionow and a team of other specialists replaced 80 percent of the woman’s face with that of a female cadaver a couple of weeks ago in a bold and controversial operation certain to stoke the debate over the ethics of such surgery.
The patient’s name and age were not released, and the hospital said her family wanted the reason for her transplant to remain confidential. The hospital plans a news conference Wednesday and would not give details until then.
Surgeons in Spain have carried out the world’s first tissue-engineered whole organ transplant – using a windpipe made with the patient’s own stem cells.
The groundbreaking technology also means for the first time tissue transplants can be carried out without the need for anti-rejection drugs.
Five months on the patient, 30-year-old mother-of-two Claudia Castillo, is in perfect health, The Lancet reports.
She needed the transplant to save a lung after contracting tuberculosis.
A sterile woman is to give birth to the world’s first baby conceived after a full ovary transplant.
The 38-year-old was rendered infertile when her ovaries failed at the age of 15, causing her to suffer an early menopause. After receiving an ovary transplanted from her twin sister, the woman, who lives in London, is expected to give birth this week.
The pioneering surgery will give hope not only to more than 100,000 British women who suffer an early menopause, but also to those undergoing chemotherapy or radiotherapy for cancer. They could now freeze an ovary before beginning the treatment.
A former US Marine has become the first woman in the world to be fitted with a “bionic” arm that she can control by her thoughts alone.
Claudia Mitchell lost her left arm at the shoulder in a motorbike accident.
Her new arm works by detecting movements of a chest muscle that has been connected to the remains of nerves that once went to her real arm.
The first prototype was fitted to double amputee Jesse Sullivan four years ago.
MUNICH, Germany (AP) — A German farmer who received the world’s first complete double arm transplant said Wednesday that incredulity gave way to joy when he woke from surgery to discover he had arms again.
Karl Merk, who lost his arms in a farming accident six years ago, said he at first could not believe that the transplant appeared to have been succesful.
“It was really overwhelming when I saw that I had arms again,” said the 54-year-old, who wore a sleeveless black shirt showing clearly where his new arms had been grafted.
“These are my arms, and I’m not giving them away again,” he told reporters at the Munich University Clinic where he remains nearly three months after the 15-hour operation.
A cone biopsy is an extensive form of a cervical biopsy. It is called a cone biopsy because a cone-shaped wedge of tissue is removed from the cervix and examined under a microscope. A cone biopsy removes abnormal tissue that is high in the cervical canal. A small amount of normal tissue around the cone-shaped wedge of abnormal tissue is also removed so that a margin free of abnormal cells is left in the cervix.
Unless you, or a family member, have suffered a heart attack or severe heart condition, it’s a good bet that you don’t know your metal stent from a drug-coated stent. Stents are small, lattice-shaped, metal tubes frequently used to treat blockages in the blood vessels of the heart. Once in place, stents help hold the arteries open so that the heart muscle gets enough blood. Stents can be made of only metal (bare-metal stents) or they can be coated with small amounts of drugs that are released over time to help keep the arteries from being blocked again (drug-eluting stents). Both types of stents are considered to be safe and effective when used according to their instructions, but a new study has found the drug-eluting stents to be more beneficial for people who have heart attacks.
LONDON (AP) — Transplanting faces may seem like science fiction, but doctors say the experimental surgeries could one day become routine. Two of the world’s three teams that have done partial face transplants reported Friday that their techniques were surprisingly effective, though complications exist and more work is still needed.
“There is no reason to think these face transplants would not be as common as kidney or liver transplants one day,” said Dr. Laurent Lantieri, one of the French doctors who operated on a man severely disfigured by a genetic disease.
Acupuncture has emerged as a new complement to treating cancer. Recently our contributors have mentioned the use of complementary medicine—or CM—as a means to treating cancer along with the widely used treatment of chemotherapy.
While helping show the statistics involved for the use of CM among cancer patients and survivors, the recent article says, "Previous studies have relied on limited data, focusing on patients in active treatment, small sample sizes and single or few cancer types." One such study has focused on just a few types of cancer, but its limited data is not bad news for acupuncturists or patients.
WASHINGTON – The best path to a clogged heart may be through the wrist. About a million artery-clearing angioplasties are performed in the United States each year, and the usual route is to thread a tube to the heart through an artery in the groin.
Now a major study shows going through the wrist instead can significantly lower the risk of bleeding — without the discomfort of lying flat for hours while the incision site seals up.
Just one in 100 angioplasties is done via the wrist, and the approach isn’t for everyone. But Monday’s study promises to spur more specialists to use the method. Read more
