Archive for month: August, 2020

Genesis Digital Imaging, Inc. (Los Angeles, CA), a privately-held imaging software developer and distributor of diagnostic imaging systems, has been acquired by Carestream Health.

This acquisition enables Carestream to expand its customer base by leveraging the expertise Genesis has in serving U.S. dealers that primarily call on the value tier market and specialty medical practices. Carestream offers a proven portfolio of products and services designed specifically for these types of healthcare customers.

With this acquisition, Carestream is uniquely positioned to serve customers across the U.S. With its direct sales force offering large hospital customers the latest high-end digital radiography systems and healthcare IT solutions, its Quantum Medical Imaging organisation serving customers in the mid-tier hospital, orthopedic and imaging centre segments, and Genesis focusing on customers in the value tier segment, Carestream has innovative products and services and attractive pricing for customers in all areas of the U.S. market.

Currently repeated operations are needed to replace batteries in pacemakers, but according to US researchers a device which could harness energy from a beating heart can produce enough electricity to keep a pacemaker running.
Piezoelectric materials generate an electric charge when their shape is changed. They are used in some microphones to convert vibrations into an electrical signal. Researchers at the University of Michigan are trying to use the movement of the heart as a source of electricity.

In tests designed to simulate a range of heartbeats, enough electricity was generated to power a pacemaker. Tests suggested the device could produce 10 times the amount of energy needed. The designers now want to test the device on a real heart and build it into a commercial pacemaker.

The British Heart Foundation said clinical trials were needed to show it would be safe for patients.

Dr Amin Karami told a meeting of the American Heart Association that pacemaker batteries needed to be replaced approximately every seven years. ‘Many of the patients are children who live with pacemakers for many years. You can imagine how many operations they are spared if this new technology is implemented.’

Prof Peter Weissberg, the medical director at the British Heart Foundation, said: ‘Advancing technology over recent years has meant people with pacemakers need to change their battery less often. This device could be another step forward along this path. ‘If researchers can refine the technology and it proves robust in clinical trials, it would further reduce the need for battery changes.’

When given early treatment, children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) made significant improvements in behaviour, communication, and most strikingly, brain function, Yale School of Medicine researchers report in a new study.
The study was published by Yale Child Study Center researchers Dr. Fred Volkmar, Kevin A. Pelphrey, and their colleagues.
The results suggest that brain systems supporting social perception respond well to an early intervention behavioural program called pivotal response treatment. This treatment includes parent training, and employs play in its methods.
ASDs are complex neurobiological disorders that inhibit a person

A ‘chemo-bath’ which delivers toxic cancer drugs to just one organ in the body has been used on patients in the UK for the first time, say doctors. Chemotherapy drugs kill rapidly growing cells such as cancers, but they also attack healthy parts of the body.
Doctors at Southampton General Hospital believe targeting just one organ can prevent side effects. They also say it means they can give higher doses without causing damage to the patient.
Chemotherapy drugs are normally injected into the veins of patients. However, the whole body, rather than just the tumour, is exposed. It results in side effects such as fatigue, feeling sick, hair loss and damage to fertility.
Two patients in the UK have now received chemotherapy focused on just their liver. Both had a rare eye cancer which had spread to the liver. The operation works by inflating balloons inside blood vessels on either side of the liver to isolate it from the rest of the body. The liver is then pumped full of chemotherapy drugs, which are filtered out before the liver is reconnected to the main blood supply.
It means only a tiny fraction of the chemotherapy dose ends up in the body.
Dr Brian Stedman, a consultant interventional radiologist, said: ‘To cut off an organ from the body for 60 minutes, soak it in a high dose of drug and then filter the blood almost completely clean before returning is truly groundbreaking.
‘Previously, the outlook for patients specifically suffering from cancer which has spread to the liver has been poor because standard chemotherapy’s effect is limited by the unwanted damage the drug causes to the rest of the body.’
The surgery took place in the past three months and both patients are said to be doing well and their tumours ‘all look smaller’, he said.
Dr Stedman told the BBC: ‘In 20 years’ time the idea of injecting a drug which poisons the whole body for a cancer in just one small area will seem bonkers.’
He suggested that any organ which could be easily separated from the blood supply, such as the kidney, pancreas and lungs, would be suitable for this kind of approach. However, he said the method was ‘in its infancy’ and he was ‘not sure this is the finished product or the end of the story’.
The technique is also being tested in the US and elsewhere in Europe. BBC

A new three-dimensional (3-D) digital mammography technique has the potential to significantly improve the accuracy of breast cancer screening, according to a study.
Two-dimensional (2-D) x-ray mammography, the current primary screening method for early detection of breast cancer in women, is a valuable tool but has some limitations. Surrounding normal tissue can mask lesions, and 2-D views do not provide direct information about the volumetric appearance