Protexo aims to help asthma patients( special gadgets)

The Protexo is a device that blows cool air on asthma sufferers as they sleep, to keep allergens away from their 'breathing zone'

Asthmatics have it hard enough when they're awake, having to periodically use their inhalers, or remove themselves from situations that could trigger an attack. For some of them, however, their symptoms get even worse when they go to bed, preventing them from getting a good night's sleep. Airsonett, a Swedish medical tech company, is attempting make life easier for those people. It has created a device called the Protexo, which it claims should be of great assistance to night-time asthma sufferers.

According to Airsonett, the heat rising from the exposed skin of a sleeping person creates a chimney effect, drawing cooler air from the immediate vicinity towards the head, and then up. As that air travels through and across the bed sheets (which are a significant source of allergens), it picks up particles from those sheets and brings them to the person's nose, where they are inhaled.

Protexo

The Protexo works by gently blowing a stream of filtered air down onto the person, that air being slightly cooler than the air in the room. This cancels out the chimney effect, and in fact serves to move the particle-laden air away from the person's face. The device is apparently able to modulate the velocity of its air flow, in order to break the convection effect, while still creating as little draft as possible.
Known as Temperature controlled laminar airflow treatment, or TLA, the technology has reportedly been shown to result in a 3,000-fold reduction of particles measuring half a micron and larger, as measured in the breathing zone. It is also said to improve on the performance of a best-in-class air purifier by a further 99 percent.

In a recent year-long study, a group of 281 non-smoking asthma sufferers from six European countries regularly used either a Protexo, or a dummy device. At the end of the trial, the Protexo group scored 14 to 15 percent higher when evaluating their quality of life, but also showed significant decreases in nitric oxide and immunoglobulin E levels, both of which are indicators of inflammation.
There's no word on pricing or availability, but interested parties can find more information on the Airsonett website.

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Spray-on Skin Kit Could Heal Wounds Faster

Recell Credit: Avita Medical

The idea of spray-on skin conjures up memories of Halloween costumes past. But in the case of ReCell, it’s actually a kit that can do a lot of good. The ReCell Kit has been developed by Avita Medical to treat burns, wounds, and hyper or hypo pigmentation caused by disease, and to improve the look of scars. It works by harvesting a patient’s keratinocytes and melanocytes, the building blocks of skin cells, and putting them in a suspension solution that allows them to multiply. Because the cells are from the same patient, there is no risk of rejection or disease.
An area about 80 times as large as the original sample can be produced in under a half hour. After that, the new cells are sprayed over the burn, where they will multiply even more. The company claims this type of application will result in less scarring (as compared with skin grafts) and make the skin look as if it were never damaged, especially in younger patients. The kit has been approved for use in Europe, Australia and Canada, but is still undergoing clinical trials in the United States.

Via: Gizmodo
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Scottish Doctors Use Ultrasound to Heal Broken Bones

Ultrasound Scanner     Wikipedia

Doctors in Scotland are using ultrasound to help patients with severe bone fractures, and finding it speeds recovery time by more than one-third. The ultrasonic pulses induce cell vibration, which doctors say stimulates bone regeneration and healing.

The technology is similar to the type used on pregnant women to image growing fetuses, but it uses a different sound frequency and a different pulse rate, according to the BBC. Patient Gary Denham received the treatment for a shattered ankle he sustained after falling 20 feet. “It's got a wee strap and that goes round where the break was,” he told the BBC.
Technology, Rebecca Boyle, broken bones, fractures, health, medical technology, Scotland, ultrasound, ultrasound probesA water-based gel is applied to a transducer like the type seen above, which then goes inside the strap and stays there for 20 minutes. The patient doesn’t feel anything, but the sound waves penetrate tissue to stimulate cellular activity.
Typically, Denham’s type of injury would take six to 12 months to heal properly — if it does at all — but his foot healed after four months, according to his physician, Dr. Angus MacLean. He said evidence suggests the ultrasound speeds up healing by about 40 percent.
Scottish doctors first developed ultrasound as a diagnostic tool in the 1950s, using adapted sonar technology from Glasgow’s Western Infirmary, the BBC explains. It’s now used for a wide range of diagnostic and therapeutic purposes — we’ve seen ultrasound used to heal punctured lungs, for instance, and it has the potential to break up blood clots, among other uses. But the Glasgow group is the first we’ve seen to use it for bone regeneration.
Apparently the treatment remains fairly expensive, so for now it’s only being used in complex fractures like Denham’s, the BBC says. But as ultrasound devices get smaller and cheaper, future fractures may be much faster to heal.

[BBC]

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