Archive for month: August, 2020

Spinal manipulation involves applying force to move joints as a way of treating pain. A new study shows that the technique works for some patients with low-back pain but not for others.

Depending on whom you ask or what scientific paper you read last, spinal manipulation is either a mercifully quick, effective treatment for low-back pain or a complete waste of time.

Researchers at the University of Alberta have found that spinal manipulation

A leadless cardiac pacemaker showed

When the patient showed up in the emergency department, he was hurting. He’d taken a nice long soak in a warm tub, and a few hours later his fingers swelled enough to trap his ring. Now that finger was painful and swollen. The ring needed to come off, since restricted blood flow can lead to tissue death in the finger, which is about as fun as it sounds.

Ordinarily, this wouldn’t be much of a problem. ER personnel are used to removing rings. ‘It’s not uncommon at all,’ says Dr. Bret Nicks, an emergency room physician at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, N.C., who says he and his colleagues see traumatic injuries from working with heavy machinery such as cars or even the odd softball misfire. A published review of the problem also names ‘infection, skin disorders, allergic reactions, bee sting, and pregnancy’ as causes for trapped rings.

Usually they can be removed using lubrication, elevating the hand or the nifty string trick. And if that fails, out comes the ring cutter. But as two physicians describe, this patient’s ring was made of titanium.

Titanium rings are growing in popularity because they’re very strong, light, hypoallergenic and less expensive than rings made of precious metals like gold or platinum. But that strength can also make them more difficult to remove. A normal ring cutter won’t necessarily work, says Dr. Andrej Salibi, a plastic surgeon at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals in the U.K. and co-author of the letter. Jewellers who work with titanium say the commercially pure grades are much softer and easier to cut than aircraft grade, an alloy that also includes aluminum and vanadium; the exact type of titanium in this patient’s ring isn’t known. And of course the degree of difficulty can be boosted by the thickness of the ring.

In this case, the ring cutter failed, and the fire department came in with its own specialized cutting gear. The ring wouldn’t budge. The patient was admitted to the hospital and spent the night with his hand elevated. The next morning one of the physicians suggested they try something else, namely bolt cutters, which are often on hand in hospitals.

It worked! But ‘the other problem is that once you cut it, you have to take it off,’ says Salibi. And that takes a lot of force. So using some large, heavy-duty paperclips, the two physicians pulled the ring apart. The man’s finger was fine. The doctors say bolt cutters are preferable to dental saws or diamond-tipped saws, which aren’t likely to be lying around the hospital and require more manpower. npr

Advances in 3-D printing have led to new ways to make bone and some other relatively simple body parts that can be implanted in patients. But finding an ideal bio-ink has stalled progress toward printing more complex tissues with versatile functions

Tiny gas microbubbles can enhance the delivery and absorption of cancer drugs in patients with advanced pancreatic cancer, according to a new pilot study. The study was described at the International Contrast Ultrasound Society (ICUS) annual conference in Chicago.
One year after their last treatment cycle, two of 10 patients are still alive. 74 percent of pancreatic cancer patients die within the first year of diagnosis. The average life expectancy after diagnosis with metastic pancreatic cancer is just three to six months.