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Biotech Science Technology

Surgery Using A Sunlight Scalpel 59

Posted by timothy from the good-old-pointy-sunlight dept.
Makarand writes "Research conducted by Israeli doctors has shown that it is possible to use concentrated sunlight instead of lasers to perform surgery, providing a safe and low cost alternative to laser treatment. In their experiments sunlight was transported into the operating room from outside using a system of optical fibers. The concentrated rays - containing several watts of energy - were then used in the experimental surgery conducted on rats." Here is Wired's similar story.
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Surgery Using A Sunlight Scalpel More

Surgery Using A Sunlight Scalpel

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  • Confirmation (Score:5, Funny)

    by kinnell ( 607819 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @06:18AM (#6578480)
    I can verify that this is indeed feasible. I have myself performed exploratory operations on a number of ants and other selected insects using concentrated sunlight.
    • Yeah, my fifth grade teacher STILL has my magnifying glass he confiscated from me during recess! It's probably been sitting on his desk for the past 11 years.

    • Re:Confirmation (Score:5, Funny)

      by cpeterso ( 19082 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @02:59PM (#6582632) Homepage
      When I was a kid, I attempted numerous cryogenic experiments on bees. I froze them in my freezer and would then try to wake them using sunlight or the microwave. Here are my results:

      Bee in microwave 0-5 seconds: no change in behavior
      Bee in microwave 5-10 seconds: rapid movement
      Bee in microwave 10+ seconds: no movement/game over

      I now regret my mad science experiments (there were many others), but at least I can share the scientific results with others. Let not those bees die in vain...
    • Of course there is the light sculpture in England that was noticed for one fact: birds flying overhead tended to burst into flames.

  • Cloudy days. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Spudley ( 171066 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @06:29AM (#6578531) Homepage Journal
    All fine and dandy... until the sun goes behind a cloud right at the critical moment! :-o

    • Re:Cloudy days. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by TripleA ( 232889 )
      Or, like in some parts of the world, the sun is intense enough only during May, June, July and August. I have indeed tested this myself. You can't fry ants in the winter, cause a) there are no ants to be seen, and b) the sunligth is not strong enough.

      • Re:Cloudy days. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by MImeKillEr ( 445828 )
        You can't fry ants in the winter, cause a) there are no ants to be seen, and b) the sunligth is not strong enough.

        You've obviously never lived in my area of Texas.

        Summers (with the exception of this one) usually have 30+ consecutive days over 100 degrees F. I'm not sure how many days we've had in the 100s this year. Three years ago we hit 117F.

        We've had 'winters' where temps were in the 80s and not a single cloud in the sky.

        We can literally wear shorts outdoors on Christmas.

        Sure, the ants would usuall
        • AFAIK, winter = cold season.

          If it's not cold enough, it's not winter.

          Maybe you have a different idea of winter. But Winter does not mean Christmas time. Winter does not mean Dec-Feb. See the southern hemisphere for examples.

          That said, you should be able to still fry ants with sunlight during winter in places where you have sunlight (not places where it's dark all the time) - the trick is to collect enough sunlight.

          • Re:Cloudy days. (Score:4, Informative)

            by MImeKillEr ( 445828 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @09:42AM (#6579910) Homepage Journal
            AFAIK, winter = cold season.

            Wrong. Winter is defined as (from dictionary.com)

            "The usually coldest season of the year, occurring between autumn and spring, extending in the Northern Hemisphere from the winter solstice to the vernal equinox, and popularly considered to be constituted by December, January, and February. "

            Generally, its understood that winter (in the northern hemisphere at least) is the time when the earth tilts on its axis and the northern hemisphere is furtherst from the sun.

            • Slashdot! (Score:4, Funny)

              by ClosedSource ( 238333 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @11:14AM (#6580778)
              Where else can you start a conversation on advances in surgery and end up arguing over the definition of winter?
            • Umm, during winter time, the northern hemisphere is closest to the sun, the whole earth is. Relative to the southern hemisphere, the northern is more far away though.

              • Re:Cloudy days. (Score:3, Informative)

                by MImeKillEr ( 445828 )
                Nope.

                From http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answe r s/980221a.html [nasa.gov]:

                "
                I have heard two conflicting reasons explaining why winter is cooler.

                (1) Because of the slight pivot of Earth's on its axis, the sun is farther away during winter because part of the planet is pointing away from the sun, hence, less energy reaches that surface.

                (2) The sun is actually CLOSER to the surface during winter but light hits the planet at an obtuse angle which "skims" the surface. Direct rays are not hitting the surfa
                • You said the exact same thing the previous poster did; there was the assumption that winter == northern hemisphere winter, in which case, the Earth is closer to the sun than it is during the northern hempispheres Summer.

                  Which is exactly what you said. Thanks for the excellent write up! +1 Informative for you.

                  -Chris
                  • Re-read that last post...

                    "....Winter is colder because the earth's axis is tilted. Winter occurs for the hemisphere which is tilted away from the sun (the northern hemisphere in January, the southern in July). "

                    While the earth as a whole is closer to the sun, the northern hemisphere is tilted away from the sun.

                    Moron.
                    • Original poster:
                      Umm, during winter time, the northern hemisphere is closest to the sun, the whole earth is. Relative to the southern hemisphere, the northern is more far away though.

                      Fact:
                      Earth at closest approach to the sun (during northern hemisphere winter time, is 91.odd million miles.
                      Earth at farthest approach to the sun (during northern hemisphere summer time, is 94.5 million miles.

                      Nothing OP said is factually incorrect, although it is nowhere near as clear as your excellently constructed
                    • STFU and sit back down, troll.
                    • Awww, poor baby doesn't like being told he's got poor comprehension skills. Grow up. You are after all, the one who turned a civil conversation into a personal attack.

                    • No, I didn't turn it into a personal attack, I was simply replying to your trollish response.

                      So, go fuck yourself.
                • Winter is colder because the earth's axis is tilted. Winter occurs for the hemisphere which is tilted away from the sun (the northern hemisphere in January, the southern in July.

                  Given this fact, are southern-hemisphere winters colder than northern? And are the southern hemisphere summers hotter?

                  I would assume so, since the temperature contribution from the Earth-Sun distance would add to the axial-tilt contribution, instead of subtract from it.

        • We can literally wear shorts outdoors on Christmas.
          Thats good, because we wouldn't want you to figuratively wear shorts outdoors on Christmas.
    • It doesn't do that in Israel. A camel may obscure the sun now and then, though.
    • .. and the system will convert into a high-pressure water scalpel!

  • "Oops" (Score:4, Funny)

    by rylin ( 688457 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @06:48AM (#6578619)
    Now that everyone's used to the BOFH, let me introduce the BSFH (Bastard Surgeon From Hell)..

    Blaming someone's critical conditions on sunflares, anyone? ;)

  • Are the lasers a significant cost? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TheLink ( 130905 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @09:40AM (#6579885) Journal
    Just curious - are the lasers a significant cost or are they outweighed by the costs of the people controling and maintaining the laser, and the systems involved in assisting the control (intensity, focus, width etc). Would a consistent light beam be necessary for surgery and if it is, would maintaining the consistency of a sunlight beam be cheaper?

    Personally I believe this is just a "party trick".

    If you don't have access to a laser, are there compelling reasons to pick the sunlight system over a scalpel system?

    • Re:Are the lasers a significant cost? (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I would have thought that a reader of slashdot would realise what this is good for: Home Surgery! Home metalwork!

      No longer do you need to buy a large laser or even the parts for one, leading to you being lists on $EVIL_GOVT_AGENCY databases, you can just make a concentrator mirror and fibre doohickey, and slice through things you're not supposed to slice through to your heart's content!

    • Re:Are the lasers a significant cost? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Indomitus ( 578 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @01:16PM (#6581934) Homepage Journal
      The Wired article listed the laser machines at $10,000 and the sunlight machine at $1,000. The sunlight machines are new and so I'd imagine the prices will drop as more of them are sold so the price difference will only get more in favor of the sunlight machine.

      I'm not a doctor but I believe there are many surgeries that are difficult/impossible to do with scalpel instead of a laser (many cancer removals for example). For poor areas (many of which happen to be in sunlight rich areas) this is a good way to get those surgeries done without having to buy the laser system.
    • Yeah, it's just a party trick - I agree.

      One-time costs of the machines is such a small factor, and lasers are well established and reliable.

  • That was my idea! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Gyl ( 318790 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @12:30PM (#6581540)
    Of course I wasn't going to do surgery with it. I was thinking take the Keck telescope (10 m diameter), aim it at the sun, attach fiber optic cable at the focus, cut down a forest (being a gentle example of what to do :)

    A quick google search reveals high power lasers of 100 W another quick search shows: ~250 W/m^2 as solar power reaching earth's surface. A circle of diameter 10 m, 78.5 m^2. Giving almost 20,000 watts. hehehe. Assume you loose half of that in mechanics, it's still 10,000 watts!

  • and if it's cloudy? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by confused one ( 671304 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @02:22PM (#6582370)
    'nuf said...
  • We use sunblock to protect us against UVA and UVB. Many people with hyper skin production (such as psoriasis) get PUVA and PUVB treatments to kill the skin.... yet there is always the chance of skin cancer...

    Is this sounding like a good way to get skin cancer to anyone else? Nothing like the sun focused several times over to get our yearly dosage in one location.

    • Re:Danger Wil Robinson! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by reverseengineer ( 580922 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @11:34PM (#6585556)
      Is this sounding like a good way to get skin cancer to anyone else?

      No, because the idea is to aim the beam at tissues that you want to destroy, such as tumor cells. Ideally, the targeted cells will be vaporized, so whether or not UV light induces mutations in them is a moot point.

      I do personally love the ironic possibility of using a beam of focused sunlight to destroy a melanoma caused by too much exposure to sunlight, though.

  • great! (Score:3, Funny)

    by TwistedSpring ( 594284 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @03:05PM (#6582682) Homepage
    Does this mean I can fix my ghastly vision by staring at the sun instead of going in for all that expensive laser surgery?

  • Several watts? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by JUSTONEMORELATTE ( 584508 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @05:19PM (#6583586) Homepage
    Granted the article is light on details (no pun intended) but why does the power source need to be the Sun? Why not use the same combining/collimating /focus method but draw the power from one or more conventional incandescent lamps?
    Yes, I realize that Sun == free, and electicity != free. Howsabout the Solar version for subsaharan Africa where reliable power is rare but sunlight is not, and we'll take the 1/10th-the-price-of-a-laser incandescent one here in North America where the opposite is true.

    --
    • Hey! Why not reduce the size & power requirements of the incandescent lamps by replacing them with a LASER! Oh, wait....
    • Consider for a moment that any regular light source radiates in all directions. This means that none of the rays are exactly parallel to each other. But the farther you travel from the source, the closer they get.

      The major difference between a light source on the earth, and the sun is that the sun is very far away, so the rays of the sun as they arrive here on earth are virtually parallel, very similar in nature to a laser beam. This is why you can focus the light of the sun with a magnifying glass and kil
    • The sun has LOTS of energy not just in the visible spectrum. Presumably this would aid the destruction of tumor cells. If a normal Lightbulb could do that, why would we have lasers?
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • suitable for all laser applications? (Score:5, Funny)

    by iggymanz ( 596061 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @08:28PM (#6584609)
    But can we have sharks with frickin' sunlight concentrating devices attached to their heads?

  • "Watts" of energy? (Score:2, Informative)

    by GameGod0 ( 680382 )
    How did this make it past the Slashdot editors, especially in the science section of Slashdot? Watts are units of power. Joules are units of energy. The phrase "several watts of energy" does not make any sense.
  • I'd figure that if you burn out a liver, then it's only a matter of time before your blood turns toxic and kills you. In theory, this should have killed the rats...

    • Nah. The livers were exposed for "only a few minutes." Laser surgery is a very slow way to treat large volumes of tissue, so probably a small fraction of the mouses' livers were cooked. You can lose a lot of liver tissue (like a whole lobe) and live indefinitely, assuming that your liver is functioning normally and that you didn't lose much blood when the liver tissue was removed.
    • If scientists can cure cancer in rats and fix paralysis in rats then they can probably help them recover from that. Besides, they were going to kill the rats to examine their bodies anyway.

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