Ohio

Google Glass Used To Livestream ACL Surgery.

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Google Glass is finding its way into operation rooms: A surgeon in Ohio recently became one of the first to livestream an operation and use the technology to consult with a colleague.

On Aug. 21, Dr. Christopher Kaeding, director of sports medicine at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, wore Google Glass — a wearable computer that has a frame similar to traditional eyeglasses — as he performed surgery on the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in the knee of a 47-year-old woman.

The procedure was livestreamed to a group of medical students, who watched on laptops, and to Dr. Robert Magnussen, an assistant professor of clinical orthopedics at Ohio State, who watched from his office.

During the operation, Kaeding consulted with Magnussen about what he was seeing during the surgery.

Kaeding said he did not find wearing the device to be a distraction.

“To be honest, once we got into the surgery, I often forgot the device was there. It just seemed very intuitive and fit seamlessly,” Kaeding said in a statement.

The device does not have lenses, but instead, has a small glass screen that sits above the right eye. Using voice commands, wearers of Google Glasscan pull up information on that screen like they would on a computer. The device also has a camera that can take photos and videos that show the viewpoint of the user. So far, a select group of about 1,000 people have had the opportunity to test Google Glass. One of Kaeding’s colleagues applied and was accepted as a tester, and the two partnered for the surgery.

One day, doctors may use the technology to view X-rays, MRI images or other medical information about their patient as they conduct surgeries, although this was not done in the current surgery.

“We just have to start using it. Like many technologies, it needs to be evaluated in different situations to find out where the greatest value is, and how it can impact the lives of our patients in a positive way,” said Dr. Clay Marsh, chief innovation officer at the medical center.

In June, a doctor in Maine used Google Glass to livestream a surgery on Google Hangout. The surgery was a gastrostomy, a relatively simple procedure that involves the placement of a feeding tube into a patient’s stomach.

Watch the video on Youtube. URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=DbQY1ay8Sew

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com

 

Gastric bypass makes gut burn sugar faster.

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Diabetic rats control blood glucose better after weight-loss surgery.

A procedure increasingly used to treat obesity by reducing the size of the stomach also reprogrammes the intestines, making them burn sugar faster, a study in diabetic and obese rats has shown.

If the results, published today in Science1, hold true in humans, they could explain how gastric bypass surgery improves sugar control in people with diabetes. They could also lead to less invasive ways to produce the same effects.

“This opens up the idea that we could take the most effective therapy we have for obesity and diabetes and come up with ways to do it without a scalpel,” says Randy Seeley, an obesity researcher at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio, who was not involved in the work.

As rates of obesity and diabetes skyrocket in many countries, physicians and patients are turning to operations that reconfigure the digestive tract so that only a small part of the stomach is used. Such procedures are intended to allow people to feel full after smaller meals, reducing the drive to consume extra calories. But clinical trials in recent years have shown that they can also reduce blood sugar levels in diabetics, even before weight is lost2, 3.

“We have to think about this surgery differently,” says Seeley. “It’s not just changing the plumbing, it’s altering how the gut handles glucose.”

Nicholas Stylopoulos, an obesity researcher at the Boston Children’s Hospital in Massachusetts, and his colleagues decided to learn more about this mechanism by studying one of the most popular weight-loss procedures, the Roux-en-Y bypass. The surgery reduces the stomach to about the size of a hen’s egg, and rearranges the intestines into the shape of a Y. The arm of the Y that is connected to the reduced stomach pouch is called the Roux limb.

Stylopoulos and his team performed the surgery on obese and non-obese diabetic rats, and then watched for changes in the Roux limb. They found that blood levels of compounds and proteins indicative of sugar use were higher in these rats than in controls that underwent a sham operation. The researchers then injected the Roux-en-Y-treated rats labelled glucose and imaged the animals’ digestive tracts. They found that the Roux limb was taking up and using the sugar, perhaps to compensate for receiving fewer digested nutrients from the shrunken stomach.

The team now hopes to study this process in biopsies from humans who have undergone the procedure, says Stylopoulos. In particular, he and his colleagues want to focus on the role of a protein called GLUT1, which transports glucose into cells. Rats that had been given a Roux-en-Y bypass had higher levels of GLUT1 in the Roux limb than controls, and chemically inhibiting the protein halted the uptake of labelled glucose by the Roux limb.

That, says Stylopoulos, suggests that GLUT1 may be a useful target in the hunt for drugs that could reproduce the effects of a gastric bypass.

The hunt may heat up as surgeons weigh the risks of performing bypasses on obese children, and on adults with diabetes who are only slightly overweight, notes Stylopoulos. “It’s all still very controversial,” he says. “The hope is that one day we can bypass the bypass.”

Source Nature

 

Varicella Death Underscores Importance of Catch-Up Vaccination.

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The varicella-related death of an unvaccinated, previously healthy 15-year-old girl serves as a reminder of the “importance of varicella vaccination, including catch-up vaccination of older children and adolescents,” according to an MMWR article.

The girl died in Ohio in 2009, within 3 weeks after admission to the hospital with rash, fever, and shortness of breath. The source of her exposure is unknown.

This case highlights that healthy unvaccinated people can develop severe disease, the authors say. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommends that unvaccinated people without evidence of immunity should be given two doses of varicella vaccine, and those who have previously received one dose should be given a second.

The authors write: “Health-care providers should remind parents about vaccination during routine visits for children and adolescents, and parents should be informed of the risks, including potentially severe complications, from vaccine-preventable diseases.”

Source: MMWR

How NOT To Run.

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BLOG_40days_notrun

“Shouldn’t you be gone by now?”

I sprung from bed like a medicine ball off a trampoline. My wife gave me a look that was half-concerned, half-amused, in a “you’re clearly an idiot” sort of way. It was the morning of my big race -a half-marathon, the longest event I was to run this year–and there was a problem. Actually, several problems.
In fact, my race this past weekend was a case study in how NOT to run. I’d planned to run the Tour de Ashland half-marathon with a friend as part of the “40 Days of Fitness” Challenge from Thanksgiving to New Year‘s Eve. But I hadn’t planned on waking up at 7:20 a.m. for a race that started at 9 a.m. -and still sat 90 minutes away from my house.

But that’s only the first example of many flagrant running fouls I committed on Saturday. Here are the others – along with tips to help you do better (i.e. to not be like me) the next time you lace up for a race.

MISTAKE #1: Not Training – I used to take running pretty seriously. To be honest, I scheduled my life around it. For most of the past six years, my calendar was plotted out according to the races I’d take on. This year? Not so much. What used to be a 30+ mile-a-week regimen devolved first into a laissez-faire “run as much as you can, when you can” schedule, then finally into a “ok, well maybe I’ll pick up the pace while walking the dogs today” free-for-all.

When I’d originally signed up to run the half-marathon in Ashland, I’d thought I’d break out of that rut by getting back to disciplined, higher mileage weeks. But “life got in the way” (I’ll spare you the excuses). By the time race morning arrived, I’d covered only a handful of miles in the previous week.

THE FIX: Develop a Training Plan that Fits Your Life – In fitness, like at the dinner table, our eyes are often bigger than our stomachs, only our “eyes” are our goals and our “stomachs” are the time and resources available to chase them. In my case, I should have realized that the long hours spent logging miles “like I used to” wasn’t going to happen and opted for something more efficient.

For example: The FIRST plan by researchers Bill Pierce and Scott Murr, which has been shown to get people to run half-marathons on just 3 days of running per week. Whatever we aim to take on, we need to be realistic about the amount of exercise we can take on in our daily lives.

MISTAKE #2: Pizza – Don’t get me wrong, with ingredients that deliver carbs, protein and calcium, pizza can be a runner’s friend –during training. But you want to know when you should NOT dig in to a pie? When the starting gun is 75 minutes away and you’re frantically driving a car down rural Ohio backroads.

In my mad dash out the door after waking up and realizing just how late I was, I did not have a chance to make my usual pre-run breakfast of peanut butter and bananas on toast. Instead, I grabbed the first thing I could find on the way out the door -a Tupperware full of cold pizza from the night before. The result? Well, I didn’t hurl, but my stomach felt like a passenger on the S.S. Minnow for the first five miles of the race.

THE FIX: Develop a Routine and Stick to It

Runners who know what they’re talking about will tell you: Never try anything new on race weekend, especially if it’s something you chew. You should use the weeks leading up to try different food combinations before, during and after running to see how your body reacts. When something works, you’ll feel good. When it doesn’t…well, you’ll know it. Once you find what’s right for you, go with that. And when race morning comes, plan ahead and make sure that the foods you want are available to you.

MISTAKE #3: Freezing

I’d only grabbed what I’d need to run as I fled the house that morning, so I hadn’t been thinking about what might happen after the run. Which was stupid. Because after all, what happens when you exercise? You sweat. What happens when you sweat? Duh, you get wet. What happens when you’re wet with sweat in Ohio in December, and stop moving? You get cold. Real cold.

So not long after crossing the finish line, a shiver started to set in. That shiver became a shake. And that shake became an irresistible HOLY CRAP LET’S GET OUT OF HERE NOW impulse to flee immediately. So instead of a proper warm-down or post-run stretches, I hopped back into my car, cranked the heat all the way up and drove off.

THE FIX: Plan Ahead

Whether your goal is to run a race, or just to get in an early workout, you can seriously increase your chances of success by preparing the night before. Lay out the clothes you’ll need, along with anything else that might come in handy – food, equipment, or in my case, something warm to wear afterwards. Being prepared allows you to rest better, knowing that everything is in place for you the next day.

It also pre-commits you in a way. After all, what’s a more embarrassing reminder of how you snooze-alarmed your way out of something than a neatly stacked pile of gym clothes waiting by your door?

Anyway, this isn’t to say that the whole day was a wash. I did run, and I did finish the race -albeit slowly. If I did anything right during the event, it was this: I listened to my body. I didn’t get hung up on faster times I used to run. I ran as best as I could within the way I felt that day. When I felt good, I pushed a bit. When it felt like too much, I backed off. But I let my body, rather than my ego, be the driver.
And along the way, I ran into an interesting character -somebody who inspired me. Around mile 4 of the race, a bigger guy in loud clothing -including a bright neon shirt and tall red socks–passed me on the right side.

“Hey!” He introduced himself. “I’m Doad Edwards. Nice to meet you.”

The outgoing Mr. Edwards had wavy hair that made him look like a larger Bill Rogers. I kept stride with him for a few miles, and heard lots of stories -about how he’d grown up in the area where we were running, about how he was a golf pro, about how he’d just started running a few years ago. That last part seemed unbelievable, because he was running so well. But that wasn’t nearly as incredible as what I learned next.

“I’m 62 years old,” Edwards said.

So waitaminute, I thought to myself. I’m in my early 30s, and I’m sucking wind to keep pace with a guy who’s 62?

That sucks.

No, wait.

That’s freakin’ awesome!

It’s not awesome because I was ill=prepared, out of shape and running on coagulating pizza. It’s awesome because this guy looks like he’s in his early 40s in his early 60s, and is crushing guys half his age while he’s at it. After a few miles he pulled away, and I realized that I’d just seen something inspiring. I’d seen what I want to be like three decades from now.

Time to work a little harder.

Anyway, so we’re approaching the halfway point of the “40 Days Of Fitness” campaign. Are you still with me? I know a lot of my tweeps out there have been kicking serious butt. You can see for yourself at the #40DaysOfFitness Twitter hashtag. Give yourself a shout out for your own workout while you’re there. And if you have a question about your own training, send it my way @BrianDSabin. I’ll see if I can get it answered by one of our LIVESTRONG.com experts.

Keep it up out there, folks. Let’s see this race through to the finish.

Source: Livestrong

 

Barcode birthday: 60 years since patent.

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There are now more than five million individual barcodes in use around the world, according to regulator GS1 UK.

Sunday, 7 October is the 60th anniversary of the barcode patent, filed in the US in 1952.

However the distinctive black-and-white stripes did not make their first appearance in an American shop until 1974 – because the laser technology used to read them did not exist.

GS1 said the QR code was not a threat to the traditional linear barcode.

A QR (Quick Response) code is an image made up of dots, which can contain more data than a barcode.

“They have different purposes – the barcode on the side of a tin of beans is for point-of-sale scanning. It ensures the consumer is charged the right amount and updates stock records,” said Gary Lynch, chief executive of GS1 UK.

“The QR code’s main purpose is to take the person that scans it to an extended multi media environment. Technically you can combine the two but nobody’s asking for that right now.”

The first item to be scanned by a barcode was a packet of chewing gum in an Ohio supermarket in 1974.

But the black-and-white stripes did not get a universal welcome, with some wine manufacturers refusing to incorporate barcodes onto their labels for aesthetic reasons.

Now it occasionally doubles as body art, with US singer Pink among those who sport a barcode tattoo.

“Barcodes are an icon and rightly so – we’re quite pleased about it,” said Mr Lynch.

“But if one of my daughters had one in homage to her father I’d be rather upset.”

Source:BBC

158 cases of new swine flu strain from pigs.

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 Don’t pet the pigs.

That’s the message state and county fair visitors got Thursday from health officials who reported a five-fold increase of cases of a new strain of swine flu that spreads from pigs to people. Most of the cases are linked to the fairs, where visitors are in close contact with infected pigs.

This flu has mild symptoms and it’s not really spreading from person to person.

“This is not a pandemic situation,” said Dr. Joseph Bresee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But any flu can be a risk for some people, and people should be cautious when they can, he added.

The case count jumped from 29 a week ago to 158 this week, thanks to a wave of new cases in Indiana and Ohio, said Bresee, the agency’s chief of influenza epidemiology.

Most of the infected patients are children — probably because many were working closely with raising, displaying and visiting pigs at the agricultural fairs, Bresee said.

The recent cases include at least 113 in Indiana, 30 in Ohio, one in Hawaii and one in Illinois, Bresee said in a conference call with reporters.

The count is changing rapidly. Indiana health officials on Thursday afternoon said they had seven more confirmed cases than Bresee noted. That would raise the grand total to 165 so far.

Also, diagnosis of cases has become quicker in the last week. CDC no longer must confirm a case with its own lab. Now states are using CDC test kits to confirm cases on their own on, speeding the process along. The newly reported cases were likely infected a week or two ago.

The CDC has been tracking cases since last summer. A concern: The new strain has a gene from the 2009 pandemic strain that might let it spread more easily than pig viruses normally do.

The good news is the flu does not seem to be unusually dangerous. Almost all the illnesses have been mild and no one has died. Two of the recent cases were hospitalized, but both recovered and were discharged, Bresee said.

More good news is that all of the recent cases appear to have spread from pigs to humans, meaning it’s not very contagious, at least between people. But there probably will be more cases in the weeks ahead, and it won’t be surprising if at least a few of them involve person-to-person transmission, Bresee said.

Pigs spread flu virus just like people do, with coughing, sneezing and runny noses, so people can get it by touching pigs or being near them.

Health officials don’t think it’s necessary to cancel swine shows, but are urging people to take precautions.

Fairgoers should wash their hands and avoid taking food and drinks into livestock barns, officials said, while pregnant women, young children, the elderly and people with weakened immune systems should be particularly careful.

Source: Yahoo news.