St. Jude Medical Stroke Prevention Device Recommended for FDA Approval

St. Jude Medical

A group of doctors convened by the Food and Drug Administration decided Tuesday that a new St. Jude Medical heart device to prevent strokes appears safe and effective, after more than 13 years of U.S. clinical research for the Minnesota-invented gadget. By a 15-1 vote, the doctors on the panel said Tuesday that the long-running…

Read More

How Does the Brain Control Movement?

Brain

What if you couldn’t move faster even when you wanted to? Researchers thought that the part of the brain that determines how fast we perform voluntary movements, such as walking across a room or playing a melody on the piano, was a bit like a car. It has an accelerator to make movements faster and…

Read More

Brain Prevents Anxiety by Suppressing Perception of Heartbeat 

Anxiety

Not being aware of the pulse of our heart might prevent anxiety, EPFL scientists found. Our heart is constantly beating yet we normally do not feel it. It turns out that our brain is capable of filtering out the cardiac sensation so that it doesn’t interfere with the brain’s ability to perceive external sensations. For…

Read More

Doppler ultrasound headset performs well at spotting sports-related concussion

concussion

VANCOUVER – A new transcranial Doppler platform that analyzes subtle changes in the cerebral blood flow waveform performed well in detecting sports-related concussion in a cohort study of 238 Los Angeles high school athletes. The investigational headset device was able to differentiate between those with and without a recent concussion 83% of the time, investigators…

Read More

Freshman Student Bailey Paxton Starts Medical Device Company

Bailey Paxton

Business freshman Bailey Paxton has been traveling the country since the summer before his senior year of high school, courting investors and networking with manufacturers to get his medical device company off the ground. Paxton said he wants to license and manufacture a device for storing surgical tools in the operating room. This opportunity came…

Read More

Eye-Catching Benefit of Free Surgery

Free Surgery

Lowe’s home improvement company, like a growing number of large companies nationwide, offers its employees an eye-catching benefit: Certain major surgeries at prestigious hospitals are free. How do these firms do it? With a way of paying that’s gaining steam across the health care industry, and that Medicare is now adopting for hip and knee…

Read More

Soft Robotics Inc. Appoints Mark J. Chiappetta as Chief Technology Officer

Soft Robotics Inc

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 18, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — Soft Robotics Inc., an early stage robotics company, today announced that it has appointed Mark J. Chiappetta as its Chief Technology Officer. Mr. Chiappetta is a high energy technology leader with over 20 years of experience in high growth, start-up and mid-size companies. He is an established inventor…

Read More

Rice University Students Design Testing to Validate 3-D Printed Hands

Rice University

The Rice team calling itself Carpal Diem has developed a testing suite to validate how well 3-D printed hands transfer force from the wearer, typically a child born without a fully formed hand, to the prosthetic intended to help pick up and manipulate small objects. These 3-D printed hands have become a source of pride…

Read More

New Surgical Robot with Haptic Feedback Fits Entirely Inside Body During Operation

Haptic Feedback

Engineers at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University have developed a miniaturized robot for single incision and natural orifice surgeries. The device features haptic feedback, allowing the nearby physician operating it to feel the stiffness of tissues manipulated by the instruments, a feature not available on existing big name robotic surgical systems. The Novel Surgical Robotic…

Read More

Robotic-Assisted Benign Hysterectomy Yields Better Results in Clinical Studies

Benign Hysterectomy

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Feb. 29, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Intuitive Surgical, Inc. (ISRG) today announced the published results from a new study1 titled, “Multicenter analysis comparing robotic, open, laparoscopic and vaginal hysterectomies performed by high volume surgeons for benign indication.”  When evaluating comparable surgeon experience, the study found that women undergoing benign hysterectomies by robotic-assisted surgeons using…

Read More