Cardiac surgery is reducing the use of plastic — starting with an operation for newborns who have life-threatening heart disease generally called single ventricle. Single ventricle is so dangerous because it means only one of the heart’s two ventricles can adequately pump blood. Typically, affected infants undergo open-heart surgery to receive a Blalock shunt, which […]
Vector Blog
Growing a new inner ear, in a dish
Could regenerative techniques restore hearing or balance by replacing lost sensory cells in the inner ear? Lab-created inner-ear organs, described today in Nature Communications, could provide helpful three-dimensional models for testing potential therapies. The lab-built sac-like structure above, about 1 millimeter in size, contains fully-formed balance organs resembling the utricle and saccule, which sense head […]
The long hike: A pediatric vision scanner’s journey to market
As a pediatric ophthalmologist, I do my best to assure that every young patient I examine will have a lifetime of perfect sight. The condition that I battle most commonly is amblyopia, or “lazy eye,” in which the eye is healthy but does not develop vision — simply because the brain doesn’t receive proper input when […]
From discovery to delivery: Moving academic innovations to the market
“Wouldn’t it be great if we could come up with a noninvasive diagnostic assay to detect pancreatic cancer at an earlier, more treatable stage?” asked Lori Aro of Myriad Genetics. Her company has been trying to do so for years. So why hasn’t it happened? Aro, senior director for new product planning at Myriad, outlined […]
Printing your skull: How 3D printing helps surgeons plan complex encephalocele brain surgeries
At five months’ gestation, Bentley Yoder was given little chance to live. A routine 20-week “gender reveal” ultrasound showed that a large portion of his brain was growing outside of his skull, a malformation known as an encephalocele. But he was moving and kicking and had a strong heartbeat, so his parents, Sierra and Dustin, […]
Generating a new inner ear
Could regenerative techniques restore hearing or balance by replacing lost sensory cells in the inner ear? Lab-created inner-ear organs, described today in Nature Communications, could provide helpful three-dimensional models for testing potential therapies. The lab-built sac-like structure above, about 1 millimeter in size, contains fully-formed balance organs resembling the utricle and saccule, which sense head […]
The quest for an interoperable EHR app
Today, most people’s clinical records remain siloed at a single hospital or health network. For the most part, health apps can’t tap into these data, nor can medicine learn from them. Also, most electronic health records (EHRs) are unable to import the biometric data people are collecting from their own devices, much less interpret them. […]
Staying ontop of hydrocephalus shunt failure with ShuntCheck
Antonio Venus-Reeve, 14, had his first shunt surgery for hydrocephalus when he was 2½ months old. Born at 25 weeks’ gestation, weighing less than two pounds, he had a serious brain bleed seven days later. As Antonio’s head began to swell with excess fluid, neurologists at Boston Children’s Hospital told his mother, Joanne Venus-Williams, that […]
Merging medicine and theater: Training ‘on location’
Pediatric medicine just took a step for the better in Boston’s Longwood Medical Area with a new, expanded pediatric Simulation (SIM) Center — a dedicated space where doctors, nurses and other staff can rehearse tough medical situations or practice tricky or rare procedures in a clinical setting that looks and feels real. But clinicians aren’t […]
Smartphone Diagnoses: Evaluating eye misalignment through smartphone pictures
New smartphone-based diagnostic tools are enabling consumers to take their temperatures, diagnose simple skin conditions and much more. As advanced smartphone imaging puts more and more capabilities in patients’ hands, it’s no surprise that clinicians and numerous digital health startups are leveraging them. As a case in point, the Department of Ophthalmology and the Innovation […]
Let’s explore diabetes with snakes
Originally from Southeast Asia, Burmese pythons are perhaps best known in the U.S. for the havoc they’ve been creating in the Everglades. Kept as pets and released into the wild, they can grow to nearly 20 feet long, and are hunting animals like marsh rabbits toward extinction (a problem Florida is trying to address with […]