Really cool health advances thanks to high tech products

Covering everything from cancer to organ donation, Reader’s Digest has compiled a list of the most promising solutions to prevent, detect, and treat our annoying, debilitating, and deadly ills. 

I loved reading that in the future we may be able to “print” out replacement body parts. And did you know that  a step stool can provide the “boost” medical professionals need in order to perform live-saving CPR on patients?

 

Other interesting advances include:

·         “Print” New Body Parts – Imagine being able to manufacture knee cartilage, heart valves, muscle tissue, and skin at the touch of a but­ton. That’s the aim of bioprinting, a technique that creates human tissue using a special “ink” made from do­nor stem cells.

 

·         Safer Surgery: No Tools Left Behind – Every once in a while, surgeons leave an item inside a patient’s body, increas­ing the risk of infection and even death. Now a new “magic wand” that uses radiofrequency technol­ogy can help prevent such terrible mistakes. Sponges and pads are tagged with a signal-emitting device about the size of a rice kernel. Waving the wand over the body before sewing up an incision picks up any signals from the surgical site and alerts doctors to tagged items that were overlooked.

 

·         A “Super Vaccine” Against Cancer – Cancer treat­ments that help the body heal itself are a hot research topic since they may help people avoid surgery, radiation, and chemo­therapy. Once the vaccine prompts the immune system to recognize those sugars as a threat, the body’s natural de­fenses can destroy the cancerous cells without harming healthy tissue.