Tag Archives: device

Clinical waste may be valuable for monitoring treatment response in ovarian cancer

"We were able to demonstrate that simply squirting small amounts of otherwise discarded ascites fluid into our device allowed us to quantify tumor cells and explore mechanistic markers of tumor progression without the need to process liters of ascites with advanced instrumentation not readily available in many community hospitals," says Cesar Castro, MD, MMSc, MGH Cancer Center and Center for Systems Biology, co-lead author of the PNAS paper. "Moreover, achieving point-of-care readouts of tumor cell markers from repeatedly collected ascites at different time points, could allow for frequent monitoring of treatment response without having to wait for the next imaging scan." The ability to reliably track treatment response essentially lets caregivers know whether a particular anticancer drug should be continued or if another option should be tried. Tumor recurrence begins before metastases become visible on imaging studies, so several options for non-invasive "liquid biopsies" are being investigated, including analysis of circulating tumor cells and other factors found in the blood. Since ovarian cancer metastases are usually confined to the abdominal cavity and ascites commonly form in advanced disease, the research team theorized that ascites fluid could be an alternative, if not better, option than blood for treatment monitoring. …

Cell phones could increase cancer risk

To further explore the relationship between cancer rates and cell phone use, Dr. Yaniv Hamzany of Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine and the Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery Department at the Rabin Medical Center, looked for clues in the saliva of cell phone users. Since the cell phone is placed close to the salivary gland when in use, he and his fellow researchers, including departmental colleagues Profs. …

First non-surgical circumcision device could slow spread of AIDS in Africa, officials say

Health officials have approved a first-of-its-kind, non-surgical circumcision device hailed as a potential game-changer in the battle to forestall the spread of AIDS in Africa. The PrePex is the only circumcision method, aside from conventional surgery, to gain World Health Organization approval to date, according to The New York Times. The international health organization reportedly gave its approval to the device on Friday.    Dr. Eric P. Goosby, the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, subsequently told the paper the PrePex would “truly help save lives” and that he was even considering the immediate employment of funds from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief to pay for its widespread use in AIDS-ravaged Africa. Circumcision reportedly lowers the chance of a heterosexual male contracting HIV, or the virus that causes AIDS, through sexual intercourse by about 60 percent.  The Times reports the U.S. has thus-far paid for more than 2 million circumcisions in Africa to assist the continent with its spiraling AIDS epidemic. A two-nurse team reportedly employs the PrePex to kill off a male’s foreskin through the utilization of a rubber band. The procedure, The Times reported, necessitates only topical anesthesia, and is safer than surgery. The device was developed by Circ MedTech, an Irsaeli company founded in 2009, according to Bloomberg Businessweek.  source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/06/02/first-non-surgical-circumcision-device-could-slow-spread-aids-in-africa/

Therapy that heats and destroys bone tumors eases patients’ pain

Mark Hurwitz, MD, Director of Thermal Oncology for the Department of Radiation Oncology at Thomas Jefferson University and Hospital reported that the treatment, magnetic resonance image-guided focused ultrasound (MRIgFU) ablation therapy, significantly reduced pain in 67 percent of patients who received the treatment. …

New technology makes breast cancer surgery more precise

Surgeons at UC Irvine Medical Center are the first in the country to use a device that reduces by half the need to reoperate and cut out breast cancer cells missed during an initial lumpectomy. The MarginProbe System lets the surgeon immediately assess whether cancer cells remain on the margins of excised tissue. Currently, patients have to wait days for a pathologist to determine this…

Portable device provides rapid, accurate diagnosis of tuberculosis, other bacterial infections

"Rapidly identifying the pathogen responsible for an infection and testing for the presence of resistance are critical not only for diagnosis but also for deciding which antibiotics to give a patient," says Ralph Weissleder, MD, PhD, director of the MGH Center for Systems Biology (CSB) and co-senior author of both papers. "These described methods allow us to do this in two to three hours, a vast improvement over standard culturing practice, which can take as much as two weeks to provide a diagnosis." Investigators at the MGH CSB previously developed portable devices capable of detecting cancer biomarkers in the blood or in very small tissue samples. Target cells or molecules are first labeled with magnetic nanoparticles, and the sample is then passed through a micro NMR system capable of detecting and quantifying levels of the target. But initial efforts to adapt the system to bacterial diagnosis had trouble finding antibodies — the detection method used in the earlier studies — that would accurately detect the specific bacteria…