Sask. man's invention aid to brain surgery

Saskatchewan-born Dr. Sumeer Lal didn't plan to become an inventor, but he's well on his way after being internationally recognized for helping to develop the "best new medical invention" in 2007.

"It's funny where life takes you," said Lal, a neurosurgeon who now lives in South Carolina.

Born and raised in southeastern Saskatchewan, Lal graduated from the University of Saskatchewan's college of medicine and then completed a residency in neurosurgery at the university before moving to the United States for further training. Since 2004, he has worked as a neurosurgeon in Greenwood, S.C.

Lal and co-inventor Ajay Mahajan were recently recognized for an invention that would improve a surgeon's accuracy in the operating room by mapping the brain or spine using ultrasonic waves. They won first place in the medical division of Create the Future Design contest, sponsored by several organizations including NASA through its technology magazine called NASA Tech Briefs. Individuals and groups from around the world submitted more than 1,000 entries in the competition for high-tech inventions.

Mahajan, a mechanical engineer in Illinois, is listed as the entrant even though the winning entry was the result of collaboration, says Lal.

The current technology that aids surgeons through their delicate and complex work is camera-based, he explained in an interview from his home. The optical system is expensive, large and dependent on a clear sightline between the camera and the patient.

Using sound waves, instead of an optical system, has many advantages, including price and size. Sightlines are not an issue either. The technology is similar to a global positioning system.

"This system uses sensors on the surgeon's probe that transmit ultrasonic signals to an array of receivers, which can pinpoint in real time precisely where the probe is in relation to the patient's brain," said Lal.

"Imagine a box. You have a probe, or pencil, in that box. With this instrumentation, you would be able to see the point of that pencil in the box even though you can't see in the box. That's the logic behind it."

The best part of receiving the award was not the dinner and ceremony in New York but the profile Lal and his partner are receiving.

"What did we get out of it? Credibility, credibility and more credibility," said Lal.

Shortly after an article appeared in NASA Tech Briefs, Lal and Mahajan were contacted by a multibillion-dollar company interested in their work.

Bariatric Surgery Center

Bariatric surgery (also known as weight loss surgery) is any surgical alteration of the digestive organs to lose weight. The most common procedures are gastric bypass and gastric banding (also known as stomach bypass or stomach banding). Specific types include biliopancreatic diversion (BPD), duodenal switch, gastroplasty, jejunoileal bypass and silastic ring gastric bypass.

Summary

Bariatric surgery is a procedure used to restrict food intake or interrupt the digestive process in patients who are severely obese (typically more than 100 pounds overweight). It is used only after other methods, such as dietary changes, exercise and medication, have failed to bring an individual’s weight under control.

There are two major types of bariatric surgery:

• Restrictive operations. Reduce food intake by narrowing the passage between the upper and lower parts of the stomach. Adjustable gastric banding, in which the passage is narrowed with a hollow band of silicone rubber, is an example of a restrictive operation.
  
  
• Restrictive/malabsorptive operations. Also called combined operations, these alter the small intestine so that less of it is involved in the digestive process. A Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, in which a small stomach pouch is created and attached to a Y-shaped section of the small intestine, is an example of a combined operation. This procedure allows food to bypass the lower stomach, the duodenum and the first portion of the jejunum.

These surgeries can help obese patients lose significant amounts of weight. However, they present certain health risks such as nutritional deficiencies, infection, blood clots and pneumonia. In some cases, bariatric surgery has led to death. However, death or infection occurs relatively rarely, according to the American Obesity Association.

Patients who have successful bariatric surgery will gradually return to a healthful diet after a period of time. There is no guarantee that patients will keep off the weight they have lost. The best way to increase the likelihood of maintaining weight loss is to eat a healthful diet, exercise regularly and make other physician-recommended lifestyle changes

Beaumont Doctor's Invention Improves Cataract Surgery Outcomes

PRNEWSWIRE

ROYAL OAK, Mich., Aug. 26 /PRNewswire/ -- The Beaumont Commercialization Center, a medical technology development company within Beaumont Hospitals, is making an innovative ophthalmic lens support system available for licensing.

Timothy Page, M.D., a Beaumont ophthalmologist, developed the advanced lens support system to stabilize the lens before or during cataract surgery, thereby preventing the movement of lens fragments into the back of the eye.

Each year, approximately 10 million people worldwide have cataract surgery. Elements of the eye, such as vitreous body or the lens capsule, can shift as the cataract is removed. Vitreous body, a clear gel that fills the eyeball behind the lens, can move into the front of the eye when the lens is not fully supported. This movement can lead to complications such as capsule tears, zonular dialysis, and dislocation of the lens into the back of the eye, requiring the patient to have an additional surgery by a retina specialist.

"I am excited to be able to bring something like this to market," said Dr. Page, who has been in practice for 14 years. "The system is an important development in minimizing risks and complications that can occur in such a common procedure." Dr. Page has offices in Troy and Birmingham, Michigan.

Other techniques with various apparatus do exist, such as the use of a net or levitation using the tip of a probe. They are not ideal for various reasons. A net can block the needed removal of lens fragments while the extremely small diameter of a probe makes it a challenge for even experienced surgeons to balance and elevate lens fragments.

This new lens support system consists of a cannula and a piston. By means of the piston, the lens support is movable to contracted and expanded configurations.

For licensing information, contact Mike Tanner, Director of Technology Development, at (248) 551-0567 or email him at michael.tanner@beaumonthospitals.com .

For additional information on this and other licensing opportunities from the Beaumont Commercialization Center, please visit www.BeaumontCommercializationCenter.com .

About the Beaumont Commercialization Center

Part of Beaumont Hospitals, headquartered in Royal Oak, MI, the Beaumont Commercialization Center is a hospital-based medical device development resource focused on helping manufacturers and inventors bring their ideas for new medical devices and technology to reality. The full-service center blends product development knowledge with the experience of physicians and clinical staff at Beaumont Hospitals.

The Beaumont Commercialization Center offers intellectual property, design engineering, prototype services, usability testing, clinical trials, and regulatory assistance. For more information about the Beaumont Commercialization Center, visit www.beaumontcommercializationcenter.com .

SOURCE Beaumont Commercialization Center

Inventions And Innovations By Surgeons The Focus Of 'Surgery'

Surgeons are uniquely positioned to recognize areas for improvement in patient care and to develop innovative solutions to meet those needs. However, even the most productive surgical researchers may lack the know-how to develop their insights into successful commercial products. A special symposium in the February issue of SURGERY (Volume 143, Number 2, February 2008) provides surgeons with expert insights into the process of developing their ideas into commercially viable products that will benefit large numbers of patients - while providing a financial return to inventors, investors, and university research departments.

Invited by the editors of SURGERY the symposium includes contributions from a cross-section of experts, including noted experts in copyright and intellectual property, technology transfer, biomedical engineering, and finance, as well as from surgeons experienced in translating research ideas into the marketplace.

With mounting financial pressures academic medical centers are seeking new ways to support their missions of education, patient care, and research. A key initial question is whether the idea is patentable - that is, truly new, useful, and non-obvious. Once an idea with commercial potential is recognized, it must be developed through the complex processes leading to commercialization.

The eleven articles in the symposium emphasize that surgeons who invent new products provide a positive service, bringing valuable ideas from concept to the patient's bedside. Without the arduous and painstaking process of commercialization - including finding investors willing to take the financial risk of funding new technologies - innovative techniques of clinical value will never be developed to the scale at which they can benefit large numbers of patients.

For surgeon-researchers used to academic freedom and research for its own sake, collaborating with industry raises some unaccustomed issues. An overarching issue is conflict of interest. Today, universities have strict policies regarding potential financial conflicts of interest. These policies play an essential role in minimizing research bias and protecting patients serving as research subjects. However, one article in the symposium argues that an obsessive focus on conflict-of-interest disclosures hinders the development of beneficial research and innovations.

The development of new health science technologies offers a rare combination of potentially large financial returns with true health care advances with a significant impact on patients. In an introductory note, SURGERY Co-Editors-in-Chief Andrew L. Warshaw and Michael G. Sarr write, "The Editors offer this compendium, evidence of a changing academic world, in the hopes that our novel, imaginative, and innovative nuggets will be recognized and their value realized."

Information about Latest New Technology Advancements in Back Surgery

One of the most severe and painful ailments that affects humans is back pain. In most of the cases it is a minor pain that is caused mostly due to old age and degeneration of bones etc. In extreme cases, the pain can be excruciating and can cause numbness of legs and can render a person immobile for the most part.

The causes for back pain vary largely from degenerated or damaged discs, pinching of nerves, inflammation or infection in the discs, unwanted growths etc. The age old cures for back aches include massaging, acupuncture etc. Cures of the new world or the Modern era for the back pain include different methods back surgery.

This realm of medicine and surgery has been undergoing changes very frequently due to the inventions of new technology, new surgical procedures, instruments etc and these are making back surgery more are more simpler. New inventions in back surgery include genetically modified protein that induces a patients bones to grow.

This new technique removes the need for a surgery (before the back surgery) in order to remove healthy bone chips from a patients body (mostly from the hips) which will be used during the back surgery to replace the damaged discs that are removed from the spine.

Thus this technique makes one surgery redundant and reduces the operation time, healing time and speeds up the recovery procedure. It also eliminates the pain that occurs in the area from where the bone is removed, that is normally associated with the patients during their recovery period.

Another new invention that is making back surgery an easier task for both the surgeon and the patients is the Laser. Laser can be used in back surgery to help reduce the big incisions that are normally made. Laser can also be used to remove unwanted growth. It is extremely accurate and hence the surrounding parts are not affected during the surgery. New ways of using laser in back surgery are being experimented.

It is estimated that lasers and other new discoveries will ensure that most of the back surgery will be performed in a minimally invasive way in contrast to the open way, in which large incisions have to be made and large number of muscles have to stripped and moved in order to make way for the instruments during the surgery. New inventions are thus making the back surgery easier for the surgeon and the patient, and are also making it safer, less painful and lot economical.

Gastric Bypass Surgery

About Gastric Bypass Surgery

A gastric bypas surgery is an operation that is performed for those people who are willing to lose weight in a short period. This surgery is performed as a last resort only. Recommendations for other weight loss programs are done and if they do not work out properly then a gastric bypass is done.

The changes done by a gastric bypass surgery is irreversible. People who want to lose more weight in the order of 100 pounds are usually recommended for this surgery. Obese people with BMI of more than 40 are the right candidates for these operations. In a gastric bypass the stomach is made small so that the food that is allowed to be taken is drastically reduced. A pouch is made in the stomach for this purpose.

The initial length of the intestine is bypassed the the remaining part is connected to the pouch that is made in the stomach. As a net result the length of the intestine is reduced. Due to this the food that is absorbed by the intestine is also reduced. This combination of effects reduces the weight of the concerned person over a short period. Within 12 months you can see visible changes in weight loss.

People who have undergone these bypass sugery would have lots of skin hanging loose around their abdomen, between the arms and shoulders, thighs, breasts, face, and the neck. This might look ugly for the person. Hence a person who has undergone a gastric bypass surgery would take up plastic surgery for fixing these skin properly and to give a new image to the person. The cost of the plastic surgery varies depending upon the areas in which the skin has to be tightened.

Vascular Surgery

What is Vascular Surgery

A vascular surgery involves the treatment of the blood vessels in our body. The main type of problem that is faced, for which vascular surgery is recommended, is the blockage in the arteries that carry blood to the different parts of our body. For example a carotid artery is an artery that is found in the front of the neck. This artery is responsible for carrying the blood to the brain.

If there is any blockage in this artery and if the blood supply is not normal to the brain, the patient may experience numbness and sometimes experience mild to severe stroke. Aortic aneurysm is also a condition in which blood is not taken properly to the different parts of the body by the aortic arteries.

These blockages in the arteries are treated using vascular surgeries. One way of treating this blockage is by inflating a balloon in the artery to make more space for the blood to flow and the other one is to bypass the part of the artery where blockage is found so that the blood is carried in a different route.

Diagnosis is done for a vascular surgery using CT scan, MRI scan, cerebral angiogram, and duplex ultrasound. People who smoke are mostly affected by these problems. The doctor would recommend the patient to stop smoking if they want to recover from these problems quickly. Stopping smoking may also help in speedy recovery after a vascular surgery. DVT, Thrombophlebitis, and Varicose veins are some of the other problems that are vascular in nature. A vascular surgery is performed to treat these problems also.