LivaNova ’s SenTiva Vagus Nerve Stimulation for Epilepsy Cleared in Europe
LivaNova won European CE Mark clearance for its SenTiva generator and accompanying Programming System for treatment of epilepsy in patients that don’t respond well to drugs. It is able to detect the onset of certain seizures and deliver extra stimulation to help to avoid or lessen the impact of the seizure. The same system received FDA approval last year.
The device measures the person’s heart rate and body position, logging the data so that it can be accessed by a physician following seizures to better understand what happened.
It comes with a programming wand and a tablet computer to wirelessly program th...
Source: Medgadget - April 18, 2018 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Editors Tags: Neurology Neurosurgery Radiology Source Type: blogs
Medtronic ’s Visualase MRI-Guided Neuro Ablation System Cleared in EU
Medtronic won European CE Mark approval to introduce its Visualase MRI-guided minimally invasive laser ablation system for neurosurgical applications. The product allows for monitoring of ablation in real-time, so as to avoid injuring tissues outside the target area. Laser energy is delivered via an applicator only 1.65 mm in width that requires no more than a 3.2 mm burr hole, which means that little if any hair has to be shaved off.
Detection of ablation is done using MRI thermographic imaging. Multi-plane monitoring and superimposition of MR thermometry and thermal damage estimate maps on top of each other provides ac...
Source: Medgadget - April 12, 2018 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Editors Tags: Neurosurgery Source Type: blogs
Implanted Brain Prosthesis Helps to Retain New Memories
Diseases such as Alzheimer’s and stroke, as well traumatic brain injuries, can do severe damage to patients’ memory system in the brain. Anyone taking care of Alzheimer’s sufferers, for example, knows well the importance of memory to a person’s sense of self and overall well-being. Hope is on the horizon, though, as researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and University of Southern California (USC) have developed a way to electrically excite groups of neurons in the hippocampus, where new memories are made, so as to significantly improve memory retention.
The work was performed on human vo...
Source: Medgadget - April 9, 2018 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Editors Tags: Neurology Neurosurgery Psychiatry Source Type: blogs
Tropical Travel Trouble 007 Mega Malaria Extravaganza
LITFL • Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog LITFL • Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog - Emergency medicine and critical care medical education blog
aka Tropical Travel Trouble 007
When you think tropical medicine, malaria has to be near the top. It can be fairly complex and fortunately treatment has become a lot simpler. This post is designed to walk you through the basic principals with links to more in depth teaching if your niche is travel medicine, laboratory diagnostics or management of severe or cerebral malaria. If you stubbled on this post while drinking a cup of tea or sitting on the throne and want a few basi...
Source: Life in the Fast Lane - April 5, 2018 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Neil Long Tags: Clinical Cases Tropical Medicine malaria Plasmodium plasmodium falciparum plasmodium knowles plasmodium malariae plasmodium ovale plasmodium vivax Source Type: blogs
It ’s time to start thinking about cannabinoids
A patient comes to you asking, “Doc, my seizures are getting worse, I really hate the side effects of my medications, I want to go a different route. What do you think about medical marijuana?” You start sweating profusely, fidgeting in your seat, thinking of every single reason why not to recommend it and come up with the standard response, “Uh, well, I’m not qualified to recommend it, and it’s not FDA approved, plus we don’t really know much about it. There could be so many side effects.”
And then we have the de rigueur reply, “There are not enough large randomized control ...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - April 4, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/virginia-thornley" rel="tag" > Virginia Thornley, MD < /a > Tags: Conditions Medications Neurology Source Type: blogs
Automatically-Triggered Brain Stimulation during Encoding Improves Verbal Recall
Fig. 4 (modified fromEzzyat et al., 2018). Stimulation targets showing numericalincrease/decreasein free recall performance are shown in red/blue. Memory-enhancing sites clustered in the middle portion of the left middle temporal gyrus.Everyone forgets. As we grow older or have a brain injury or a stroke or develop a neurodegenerative disease, we forget much more often. Is there a technological intervention that can help us remember? That is the $50 million dollar question funded by DARPA ' sRestoring Active Memory (RAM) Program, which has focused on intracranial electrodes implanted in epilepsy patients to monitor seizure...
Source: The Neurocritic - March 31, 2018 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs
LITFL Review 324
LITFL • Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog LITFL • Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog - Emergency medicine and critical care medical education blog
Welcome to the 324th LITFL Review! Your regular and reliable source for the highest highlights, sneakiest sneak peeks and loudest shout-outs from the webbed world of emergency medicine and critical care. Each week the LITFL team casts the spotlight on the blogosphere’s best and brightest and deliver a bite-sized chunk of FOAM.
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The Most Fair Dinkum Ripper Beauts of the Week
Nice discussio...
Source: Life in the Fast Lane - March 25, 2018 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Marjorie Lazoff, MD Tags: LITFL review LITFL R/V Source Type: blogs
Brain Stethoscope Turns Brain Waves to Sound to Diagnose Silent Seizures
The brain produces what looks like a messy jumble of waves (EEG) that are hard for anyone without special training to make sense of. Researchers at Stanford are overcoming that by turning all those brain waves into sound waves, and in the process allowing clinicians who are not EEG specialists to easily detect silent seizures.
Silent seizures are hard to spot because they lack symptoms, but EEG allows a specialist with a keen eye and formal training to detect abnormalities in the charts. The “brain stethsocope” from Stanford takes advantage of our auditory system’s ability to detect fluctuations in the fr...
Source: Medgadget - March 22, 2018 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Editors Tags: Neurology Source Type: blogs
Physically Fit Women Nearly 90 Percent Less Likely to Develop Dementia
Women with high physical fitness at middle age were nearly 90 percent less likely to develop dementia according to a new study.byAlzheimer's Reading RoomThe information in this study is significant.An important finding of the study is thatwhen highly fit women did develop dementia, they developed the disease an average of 11 years later than women who were moderately fit, or at age 90 instead of age 79.Previous studies indicate that if the onset of Alzheimer's could be delayed to the age of 90,the number of people living with dementia would be cut in half.Currently,at age 80 there is a thirty percent of being diagnosed wit...
Source: Alzheimer's Reading Room, The - March 15, 2018 Category: Neurology Tags: alzheimer care alzheimers alzheimers research alzheimers statistics care of dementia patients dementia care exercise fitness women Source Type: blogs
What Does Your Handedness Say About Your Brain Structure?
Left-handedness, as a relatively uncommon phenomenon, never fails to fascinate people. There is a common perception that left-handed people are more talented and artistic. To what extent these assumptions are correct, and what your preferred use of right or left hand can tell you about your brain structure?
Handedness represents the better performance or preference of using one hand, i.e., the dominant hand. Right-handedness is the most common type observed in 70–95% of the world population, followed by left-handedness, and then a very rare type of mixed handedness and ambidexterity. Although this is an important physio...
Source: World of Psychology - March 13, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Psych Central Staff Tags: Brain and Behavior Brain Blogger Publishers Brain Structure Handedness left-handed right-handed Source Type: blogs
Robotics, A.I. and Blockchain Redesign The Pharma Supply Chain
Exoskeletons will aid pharma factory workers. 3D printing will allow pharmacies to produce drugs on the spot. Blockchain technologies will help fight counterfeit drugs. These are just bits and pieces, but the entire process of the pharmaceutical supply chain will be affected by disruptive technologies. Let me show you a comprehensive overview how innovations will make it more efficient, faster and cheaper than ever before.
Exoskeletons will aid pharma factory workers. 3D printing will allow pharmacies to produce drugs on the spot. Blockchain technologies will help fight counterfeit drugs. These are just bits and pieces, b...
Source: The Medical Futurist - March 13, 2018 Category: Information Technology Authors: nora Tags: 3D Printing in Medicine Artificial Intelligence in Medicine Future of Pharma Security & Privacy AI blockchain digital Innovation Personalized medicine pharmaceutics pharmacies robotics robots supply chain Source Type: blogs
A patient ’s expertise is often undervalued
Thanks to a surprising and devastating diagnosis, I know more than most physicians about what it’s like to live with the brain cancer known as glioblastoma, everything from self-titrating my anti-epileptic medications to making sure the right ICD-10 code appears on my MRI referrals. As much as I’d rather not have this expertise, I’ve learned that it is extremely valuable for medical students, physicians, people with brain cancer, pharmaceutical companies, and others. I’ve also learned that it is undervalued.
Since I was diagnosed 20 months ago with glioblastoma — a disease I share with Sen. John McCain and about...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - March 11, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/adam-hayden" rel="tag" > Adam Hayden < /a > Tags: Patient Oncology/Hematology Patients Source Type: blogs
Soft Electronics for Long Term Neural Monitoring and Recording
Scientists at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, Linköping University in Sweden, and Columbia and NYU in New York City, have developed a highly flexible soft electronic neural interface probe that can be stretched to twice its original length. The device is suitable for long-term neural recording, and could help clinicians to diagnose and monitor neurological conditions such as epilepsy. In the future it may be useful for brain-machine interfaces, such as those controlling prosthetic limbs.
At present, long-term neural monitoring is challenging, as rigid electrical components can damage softer neural tissue. “As human tissue i...
Source: Medgadget - March 8, 2018 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Materials Neurology Neurosurgery Rehab Source Type: blogs
Evidence Against Adult Human Neurogenesis
The results here will cause some upheaval in the research community if verified, and will do doubt lead to considerable debate regardless of the outcome. For decades it is has been considered that neurogenesis, the production and integration of new neurons in the brain, continues past childhood, albeit at a lower rate. This is based largely on studies in mice, but also on a range of human evidence. The researchers here suggest that this is wrong, and in fact humans are not like mice in this regard: we do not generate new neurons at any detectable level as adults. This question of adult neurogenesis has great influence on t...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 8, 2018 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
