Items tagged with Surgery
The next proving ground for Microsoft's Kinect? It might not be where you expect. After taking over the living room and exciting gamers across the world, the Kinect has made the move to all sorts of other categories. Everything from making music videos to PC-based hacks have been seen, but for the most part, nothing on a professional level has surfaced. That's all changing now, as the Kinect slides over into the operating room. Doctor's at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center in Toronto, Canada are hoping that the Kinect could soon help them out during sophisticated surgeries. Basically, they're looking to get real-time data feedback without using a mouse; with Kinect, you could simply use it...
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A British surgeon volunteering in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa used text messaging to help him perform an unfamiliar surgical procedure, saving a teenager's life. David Nott was volunteering for the French medical charity Medicin Sans Frontierescame (A.K.A. Doctors Without Borders) and when he first saw J he knew he was dying, and needed an operation quickly. J's arm had been nearly shot off in a battle between the Congolese army and rebels. This would require a difficult procedure: a forequarter amputation, which Nott was not familiar with. However, his collegaue, Meirion Thomas, is one of only a handful of U.K. surgeons who is. Nott sent him an SMS, and Thomas replied, with step-by-step...
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People typically get cosmetic surgery to either “enhance” areas they don’t feel comfortable with, or for reconstructive purposes following an accident or major surgery. 28 year-old Thomas Martel may be the first person to ever have his body surgically altered so he could better use an electronic device, in this case an iPhone. Insert your own user-friendly interface joke here.Mr. Martel had his thumbs “downsized” in order to better use the ever-shrinking electronics of our day. The downsizing involved removing bone, fingernail, and restructing the muscles in the thumb. Despite the time involved in the planning, execution, and recover of a surgery of this kind, Mr. Martel figures that it will...
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Considering that students and businesspeople have been using MP3s to study a wide variety of subjects ranging from languages to law, is it any wonder that someone came up with the idea of teaching doctors with them? "iPods are good for your heart - at least they can help doctors make the right diagnosis of the sounds they can hear. Professor Michael Barrett MD at the American College of Cardiology last year launched a project in which the sound of hearts beating were made available to students in MP3 format for their iPods." If only somebody would clue talent agents into this teaching concept so we wouldn't have to listen to any more pop singers who can't carry a tune....
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