Pigs could grow human organs in stem cell breakthrough

UK Telegraph

Human organs could be grown inside pigs for use in transplant operations following research using stem cells.

The researchers have already managed to produce pigs that were able to generate human blood by injecting blood stem cells from humans into pig foetuses Photo: ALAMY

Scientists have found they can create chimeric animals that have organs belonging to another species by injecting stem cells into the embryo of another species.

The researchers injected stem cells from rats into the embryos of mice that had been genetically altered so they could not produce their own organs, creating mice that had rat organs.

The researchers say the technique could allow pigs to grow human organs from patient's stem cells for use as transplants...[Full Article]

Soldier Gets Full Face Transplant At Brigham And Women’s

BOSTON (CBS) – Surgeons at Brigham and Women’s Hospital have given a soldier from Indiana a new face.

30-year-old Army Private Mitch Hunter of Indianapolis was left severely disfigured after saving a woman’s life during a car accident ten years ago. He pushed a live wire off her and suffered a severe shock. It left him with a severely scarred face, a prosthetic nose and leg.

A team of more than 30 physicians, nurses, anesthesiologists and residents worked for more than 14 hours to replace Hunter’s face last week...[Full Article]

Budding artist Tilly, 5, gets to grips with her new bionic hand after losing limbs to meningitis

Daily Mail

A five-year-old girl who lost both her hands to meningitis is enjoying painting pictures again - after she was fitted with a state-of-the art prosthetic.

Tilly Lockey had both her hands amputated in 2007 and needs new limbs fitted every year as she grows.

She has now been fitted with a £24,000 right limb from a world-leading British bionics company that allows her to control all of her fingers using a sensor that picks up arm-muscle movements...[Full Article]

Picture this: Tilly Lockey can now grip a paintbrush without using a sponge to help

Helping hand: Tilly will have new limbs fitted every year as she grows

Texas man gets first full face transplant in U.S.

CNN

Dallas Wiens may soon be able to kiss his daughter, Scarlette, again, now that he has become only the second person in the world to receive a full face transplant.

The 25-year-old Wiens, who lives in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, received the new face at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital last week, when a family donated a loved one's tissue for the transplant surgery. The forehead, nasal structure, nose, lips, facial skin and underlying muscles and nerves that allow Wiens to move his face and have sensations were transplanted. The hospital would not reveal the actual surgery date to protect the privacy of the donor family.

"Dallas was injured in November 2008 when his face got too close to high-voltage line while on the job," Dr. Bohdan Pomahac, Brigham and Women's Burn Unit director, told reporters Monday. "He sustained devastating injury leaving him with bare bones instead of face."

Dallas Wiens before his surgery

Pomahac said the purpose of the full face transplant is to restore "human appearance and function." After his face healed from the accident, Wiens' only facial trait was his mouth. Once his new face heals, he will not look like himself, nor will he look like the donor because the new tissue will mold to the young man's remaining tissue and bones.

Wiens' grandfather, who is with his grandson in Boston right now, calls the surgery a miracle. He says after his grandson was so seriously injured, he did not know what would happen. His grandson, he says, is determined to "get well and move on with his life and make something of his life." Wiens has been walking and talking to his family in Texas by phone. Doctors expect he will be eating on his own soon...[Full Article]

Body organs can send status updates to your cellphone

For cardiac patients such as myself, too much excitement can be a shocking experience. If my heart rate gets too high the implanted defibrillator in my chest can think I'm having a heart attack and give me a friendly remedial shock. But such nasty surprises could soon become less of a concern for people like me – by giving our hearts their very own IP addresses.

Dutch research organisation IMEC, based in Eindhoven, this week demonstrated a new type of wireless body area network (BAN). Dubbed the Human++ BAN platform, the system converts IMEC's ultra-low-power electrocardiogram sensors into wireless nodes in a short-range network, transmitting physiological data to a hub – the patient's cellphone. From there, the readings can be forwarded to doctors via a Wi-Fi or 3G connection. They can also be displayed on the phone or sound an alarm when things are about to go wrong, giving patients like me a chance to try to slow our heart rates and avoid an unnecessary shock...

[Full Article]

After Stroke Scans, Patients Face Serious Health Risks

When Alain Reyes’s hair suddenly fell out in a freakish band circling his head, he was not the only one worried about his health. His co-workers at a shipping company avoided him, and his boss sent him home, fearing he had a contagious disease.

Only later would Mr. Reyes learn what had caused him so much physical and emotional grief: he had received a radiation overdose during a test for a stroke at a hospital in Glendale, Calif.

Other patients getting the procedure, called a CT brain perfusion scan, were being overdosed, too — 37 of them just up the freeway at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, 269 more at the renowned Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and dozens more at a hospital in Huntsville, Ala.

The overdoses, which began to emerge late last summer, set off an investigation by the Food and Drug Administration into why patients tested with this complex yet lightly regulated technology were bombarded with excessive radiation. After 10 months, the agency has yet to provide a final report on what it found.

But an examination by The New York Times has found that radiation overdoses were larger and more widespread than previously known, that patients have reported symptoms considerably more serious than losing their hair, and that experts say they may face long-term risks of cancer and brain damage...

[Full Article]

Full face transplant, with tear ducts, a world first

French doctors have carried out a successful full-face transplant -- eyelids, tear ducts and all -- on a 35-year-old man, the hospital where the operation took place confirmed on Thursday.

Doctors carried out the 12-hour operation June 26 and 27 on a patient -- identified only as "Jerome" -- afflicted with a face-disfiguring genetic disorder.

The head surgeon, Laurent Lantieri, described the surgery as a world first because it included a difficult and unprecedented transplant of tear ducts and eyelids...

[Full Article]