Dissolvable Glass For Bone Repair 168
gpronger writes "Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones, but Glass Will Certainly Mend Them! The old schoolyard ditty may be changed to reflect developments using metallic glass that will dissolve in situ instead of the traditional stainless steel or titanium hardware, which require removal by surgery once the bone has healed. Physics World reports that researcher Jörg Löffler at ETH Zurich has created an alloy of 60% magnesium, 35% zinc, and 5% calcium, molded in the form of metallic glass. Through rapid cooling, the alloy forms a molecularly amorphous glass that slowly dissolves over time, supporting the injury long enough for healing, then slowly dissolving away."
Somehow... (Score:5, Funny)
I doubt the little schoolyard ditty will be changed.
Re:Somehow... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Somehow... (Score:4, Funny)
They've tried before to change it to "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will cause me years of clinical depression and crippling social anxiety," and failed.
So I do doubt ditty diddling doing diddly dreadfully damaging.
Reality check (Score:2)
That's the way it went in practice.
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Sticks and stones may break my bones but medical advances will never change our schoolyard ditties especially the ones intended to boost our self confidence rather than convey actual medical information.
He had a glass jaw! (Score:5, Funny)
end to casts? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Only if you have a compound fracture, if you have a internal only fracture you will still need a cast.
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Just because you won't need surgery to get it out doesn't mean you won't need surgery to put it in.
Re:end to casts? (Score:5, Informative)
excessive soluble Magnesium in the body depletes calcium.
I'm sure they probably have thought about this. One could see this working both ways. Perhaps having magnesium in the replacment helps precipitate calcium in a useful place near the bone replacment. On the other hand soluble magnesium is know to rob bones of calcium, so a large source of soluble calcium especially concntrated near a weak bone might undermine it.
I have no idea what the right answer is here, but it does seem like something that need to be considered strongly.
Re:end to casts? (Score:5, Funny)
First do no harm (Score:5, Funny)
This sounds like a solid business plan: repair broken bones and weaken others so that they will break soon too, thus ensuring a returning customer!
The FDA and other national regulators of medicine are supposed to protect the people from such business models.
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I was going to post a reply consisting of me going "HA haha ha ha" forever, but then again you did say "supposed to".
GM - Government Motors (Score:2)
Well, if they just happened to own a car company they might reconsider such business models.
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Best "funny" moderation ever. :)
I would an a non-laughing "very" in front of it.
Everyone knows that the FDA IS the medicine business. (Check the people leading there, and where they worked before.)
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How about selling addictive pills (like antidepressants) to treat the symptoms of a condition FOREVER without ever fixing the cause?
First, what is the cause? Even if you can't answer that, patients still demand a treatment for the symptoms.
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Re:end to casts? (Score:5, Interesting)
Casts are annoying; but they are dirt cheap, can be performed with comparatively minimal training, and are pretty low risk. For bone breaks that are easily accessible and not too complicated, they are going to be hard to dislodge.
This stuff would, if it works, turn a two surgery process(one to implant, one to explant) for dealing with nastier sorts of bone breaks into a one surgery process. That would be a win. Turning a zero surgery process into a one surgery process would be a major loss.
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Not every implant surgery gets a return trip to claim the hardware back. My kid has a fair bit of titanium in his lower tibia and fibula from a closed (i.e., not compound) "sliding into base" accident 10 years ago; as far as I know, its' in there forever.
That said, if the implants were basically replaced slowly with bone, that would be better.
Re:end to casts? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yep. I was going to comment that I have a 10" piece of titanium in my leg from a motorcycle accident, and at my 1-year followup appointment, there was no talk of removing it. I believe that these days they tend to leave the hardware in unless it's causing problems.
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Re:end to casts? (Score:4, Informative)
My point is that I'd hope parts aren't left in place if they interfere even minimally with movement.
As a side note, I enjoy handing the part to folks and asking them what they think it is. Typically, they'll turn it over and over, examining the screw and slide mechanism (this part went into the femur's ball) and puzzle over it for a while. The usual guess is "bicycle part". When I tell them what it is, while they're still handling it, the result is usually a study in ballistic trajectories. Even funnier was the little bit of gristle left lodged in the threads that, before it completely decayed away, would invariably invoke a look of horror when I pointed out it was a chunk of me.
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Sorry for the confusion here, folks.
-The other half of Psion's brain.
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My son and daughter both had skull surgeries... while not replacement parts, they used a "sugar based polymer" screw to hold the bone plates together while the skull was healing. The cool part of that was that eventually they were absorbed into the same plates that they anchored. Pretty cool tech. Now, I'm assuming there is a strengh issue that would eliminate that polymer combo from use in broken bones, but a skull doesn't do any work or scaffolding of the body, so I guess the screw would him limited s
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A friend of mine had a pin inserted after a nasty accident. A few years later he had another nasty accident and BENT his leg. On the positive side, we discovered that his leg makes a pretty decent shortwave antenna now.
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Re:end to casts? (Score:4, Informative)
This technique is a lot more invasive than casting, and it's not injectable. They cut you open and place it just like the metal counterpart; the improvement is that you don't have to be cut open twice. So, better than bolting a metal rod down your leg, then removing it a couple months later, much worse than putting some plaster over your skin to keep you in place.
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Been there done that, wouldn't recommend it. I had a compression fracture of my left femur (that hurts!) and elected for a steel rod rather than a cast. If give the choice again I'd go with a cast. Unsurprisingly having, in my case, your thigh cut open to the bone, the core of the bone hollowed out and a steel rod inserted hurts real bad for a long time. When I tried to regain use of my leg with the rod still in I found the screws irritated tissue when I walked or, later, ran for more than a couple of block
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This technique is a lot more invasive than casting, and it's not injectable. They cut you open and place it just like the metal counterpart; the improvement is that you don't have to be cut open twice.
This would have been nice when I broke a finger about a year ago. Because the tension of the tendons would pull it out of a "set" they had to drill and insert two wires - then later open me up to pull them back out again.
A couple pins that dissolved gracefully once the bone had knit would have been a great im
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I'd still think an external cast/brace is preferable to the surgery required to implant such a device, so long as the injury is not so series as to require surgery in the first place.
To say nothing of the costs...
=Smidge=
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series? serious...
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External bone-setting and casts are less invasive than puncturing/cutting &c. I would rather keep my skin intact, thanks.
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IANAD (i'm not a doctor) but if you're under 20 (when most bone breaks occur, until you turn about 45-60), most breaks are "green tree" fractures requiring about 2-4 weeks in a cast or splint. If you break it again to a full break (which I did) you're still only looking at 4-6 weeks, tops before the cast comes off. Casts are super cheap, require zero surgery (other than the doctor "setting" the bone - done externally, no knives needed) and are generally completely non-invasive. IMO this is vastly preferable
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Possibly, but I doubt you'd regain use of the limb while it heals though. Such a thing is nothing new though.
I fell down a flight of stairs in 2001 and broke my leg pretty severely. Compound fracture in 5 places. I ended up having to get a plate and screws added to that leg (along with one big screw to prevent me from turning my ankle during this time - that one was removed later by the rest of the hardware is still in there).
I only wore a cast for a week. For the rest of the time I was given one of tho
OB: Unbreakable. (Score:5, Insightful)
They call him Mr.Glass
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What a twist!
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Glass bones would probably work out slightly better than already shattered bones.
I'm involved in something closely related. (Score:5, Interesting)
My group is cooperating with a startup that makes, among other things, glass microbeads covered with nanoparticles of whose composition I am not allowed to speak. These nanoparticles cause bone cell growth. In fact, they cause stem cell differentiation into osteoblasts, which I think is beyong cool. The glass slowly dissolves in the body and the bone remains. Our hypothesis (backed by some experimental data) is that these beads will restore fractured bones, such as spinal vertebrae, to patients with extreme osteoporosis.
Rarely have I wished success to a company, as in this case. Perhaps seeing my aunt succumb to multiple spinal fractures scared the shit out of me.
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My neighbor's, recently deceased mother suffered from those as well. Prior to her death she was so hunched over that She had to sleep in a chair and couldn't see people above their waist when she was standing, unless she turned and looked to the side.
She looked almost exactly like this: http://chinesemedicinenews.com/wp-content/uploads/hunch.gif [chinesemedicinenews.com]
Scary stuff, and I feel for your aunt.
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Thanks. Her osteoporosis is caused by some kind of cancer. But luckliy, she finally started responding positively to chemo, so here's hoping. She's still (relatively) young, not a typical osteoporosis patient.
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I think you've confused the meaning of "just." But don't feel bad, there are apparently millions of Americans out there (many in the political and chattering classes) who make this same mistake.
Physical resources are scarce. With scarcity comes the need to ration. Currently, the most efficient model for distributing these limited resources is capitalism (properly regulated by the government). Other models have been tried and shown to be lacking. So at this point you can:
1) Argue that it's "unjust" that some
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I give you the Scandinavian socialist democratic capitalist countries.
Try comparing their systems to that of the US which is spectacularly on the side of "if you can't afford treatment - die".
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6) stick with the status quo until the peasants rise up in a horrific blood bath and start over, just like other societies that are no longer with us in their previous form.
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For capitalism to allocate resources with even moderate fairness there needs to be considerable competition.
This is not the case in the health care industry.
In particular, when you have an urgent need for medical attention, you don't have a lot of choice about who you get.
Given this, I'm not in favor of "capitalism" as a solution to this. It should not be used where either monopoly or desperation is a factor, and in the case BOTH are involved.
The government has a record of being adequate. Sometimes the sy
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(How much did the post office improve after it went private? [If you don't remember, service deteriorated markedly.])
IIRC, The US Post Office never went private! The US Government just told it to run as an separate unit of the Government that should break even. If it went private? Why does it still have an monopoly on first class mail? Tim S.
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Because nobody else wants the job?
I'll admit that I'm not sure of the details, but until the Post Office "went private"(whatever the facts are) UPS kept a very low profile. FedEx wasn't heard of. Similarly for the other parcel delivery services.
(I think there's something in the constitution that's been interpreted to give the "official" post office a monopoly on delivery of mail, but all I can find is authorization for congress to establish post offices & post roads.)
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"That's all well and good, but if this company's product works, it will market it using well-endowed young female sales representatives to doctors who will use it regardless of whether the patient needs it,"
You do know that almost never happens, right? most doctors take nothing from these companies, and other doctors would scoff at the idea they would let that determine a patients treatment.
"So while I'm sure the technology is sound, our system of distribution ensures that only the wealthiest will receive i
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You do know that almost never happens, right? most doctors take nothing from these companies, and other doctors would scoff at the idea they would let that determine a patients treatment.
If these sales tactics did not increase the sales, then they would not be used (and make no mistake, they are used). Doctors may deny that they are swayed, and may honestly believe it, but the numbers don't lie.
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If these sales tactics did not increase the sales, then they would not be used (and make no mistake, they are used). Doctors may deny that they are swayed, and may honestly believe it, but the numbers don't lie.
It isn't really true. Most doctors put in so much time and effort to get to where they are, that they come off as a bit arrogant. In this sense, it's a good thing. You do not want anybody making decisions for treatment except your doctor.
Pharmaceuticals get marketed to the patients, who then go to their doctor and insist on that treatment course. Some doctors might go along with it, but an overwhelming majority say no.
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Actually with doctors its the arrogance that screws things up. They think they're above marketing!
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So as a result, y
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Re:I'm involved in something closely related. (Score:4, Insightful)
Grow up.
Distribution of goods and services are based on monetary wealth. Advanced techniques take enormous amounts of time, energy, and financial backing. Somebody making 47K a year (the current nominal GDP per capita in the US) simply cannot afford state of the art medical treatment. People incapable of paying for the best services do not receive the best services.
The fundamental problem is that the vast majority of health care expenses are incurred by people who are no longer in the work force. They are no longer generating anything useful for society. From a purely macro economic standpoint using an enormous portion of our resources to keep people who are no longer producing goods/services alive is a decision that would be ridiculously expensive.
With that said I think that there is a moral imperative to find a system that offers the best service for the lowest price. Unfortunately I seriously doubt that a massive federal program is going to do anything to lower prices unless they dictate what doctors can charge for services.
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"The fundamental problem is that the vast majority of health care expenses are incurred by people who are no longer in the work force."
Are you refering to Old People? Perhaps we need some sort of panel to decide if they live or die. We'll need a catchy name though... Hmm... BLANK panel... Hmm...
Or are you refering to Poor Welfare People? If you are, I must point out that most poor people who don't have insurance work WAAAAYYY harder than you do. They have crappy jobs, often two or three of them. The lady t
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Unfortunately for them hard work is not a useful way to measure the future value of a person. In many cases the hard work of many inefficient people is worth far less than the work of a few very efficient people.
One person who is skilled in controlling a ditch digger can dig ditches faster than a dozen people with shovels. That one person is worth a dozen of those people minus the accrued cost of the ditch digging machine. To be quite frank about it someone who is at the bottom of the pay scale is almost
Re:I'm involved in something closely related. (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, for God's sake. The undeniable corruption in the relationship between the medical manufacturing industry (drugs and devices) and the medical industry proper (physicians and other health care providers) is absurd, no one's denying that. Yes, there are serious problems. Yes, enormous amounts of money go to people who neither create new medical technologies nor provide them to patients. Yes, a lot of doctors are easily influenced by hot pharmacy reps in low-cut blouses. Yes, this leads to all sorts of injustice.
But at the end of the day, advances in medical technology still help people. Next time you get sick or injured, if you want to restrict yourself to the level of medical care that was available in, say, 1850, out some abstract sense of justice ... go ahead. Nobody will stop you. But just during my nine years in patient care, from 1989 to 1998, I saw new devices and drugs that helped our patients get better come on the market at a dizzying pace. You'd better believe we were glad to have them, and our patients were too. Now I work on the research side of things, and while I know that there are a lot of parasites between "bench and bedside," in the long run I really don't care that much. What I care about is that something I do might, possibly, help patients recover who otherwise couldn't.
Also, I broke my leg rather badly four years ago, and I was lucky enough to get the absolute best orthopedic technology out there. I still have a chunk of titanium where bone ought to be, and it will still be there when they put me in the ground -- but before such technology was invented, I'd probably have been on crutches or at least a cane for the rest of my life. Guess which one I prefer? I don't know if my orthopod chose the brand of "nail" he did because he genuinely thought it was the best out there, or because some sweet young thing fluttered her eyelashes at him. What I do know is that it's very very good, substantially better than similar constructs I saw put into patients just a decade before my injury. And I'm not a member of "only the wealthiest" by any stretch of the imagination. Too bad dissolvable bone implants weren't on the market when it happened ... if future patients with the same type of injury are luckier, then this is a good thing.
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That's all well and good, but if this company's product works, it will market it using well-endowed young female sales representatives...
SOLD!
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I am sorry you were moderated as "Troll" - I can clearly see your point, and tend to parly agree. But wouldn't you agree that it's good to have a working technology, even if it's used by a privileged few at first? That at least gives a theoretical chance of being used to cure your disease. If the technology doesn't exist, it can never be used.
So, while not ideal, it's still, apparently, infinitely better to have a solution and use it haphazardly, than not to have one at all.
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First well endowed female sales rep's don't really work, the MD's that oogle the females sales reps usually don't buy so the rep will have to make multiple visits. Second the reason for "charging unconscionably high rates to insurance companies" is so the companies will have to raise the "usual and customary fees" that they only pay 80% of anyways, that means if the MD wants $100.00 he has to charge $125.00 and expects to have to write off $25.00. Very little of the annual 20% increase makes it's way to any
It won't replace casting (Score:5, Interesting)
Unlike in a certain X-men movie, this "metallic glass" is NOT going to be injected into living human bodies while molten. It'll be carefully forged in a factory into parts that are currently made out of steel or titanium : various plates, screws, and other orthopedic hardware. For injuries that require surgery, orthopedic surgeons would use these metallic glass parts instead of what they currently use.
The problem is obvious : it's doubtful that this alloy will be as strong as steel or titanium, and so the screws or plates would have to be thicker and heavier to have the same strength. There's an obvious tradeoff : do you make a bigger incision and drill out bigger holes in the bone to use this dissolvable metallic glass, or do you use conventional hardware? Also, undoubtedly there will be decades of debate over whether the trace minerals leached into the body cause harm or not.
Bottom line : even if this technology turns out to be safe and effective and is approved for use, it will probably be decades until it is used most of the time.
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Not necessarily, one of the biggest problems with metallic inserts is that they are so much stronger than the bone that they can occasionally cause secondary breaks. If this compound was closer to actual bone in strength and flexibility, there may be less of a trade off than you think.
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Plus they cause osteonecrosis when they don't dissapate/flex as much force as bone. If you get a joint replacement in your 20s, you'll probably live long enough to require another when the ends start to decay.
Re:It won't replace casting (Score:5, Interesting)
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It would probably be a lot like pissing away an extra multivitamin or two away a day.
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Except that your reasoned argument doesn't change the fact that people are scared of things like this. Undoubtedly in 20 years someone will do some kind of research study that implies harm from the extra minerals.
I mean, cell phone radiation is in the milliwatts, and shouldn't cause more than a trivial amount of heating. Yet, there's a big scare over it, and some legitimate appearing scientific evidence implying that cell phone radiation is very dangerous.
And I'm sure they'll refine the zinc enough ... (Score:2)
You'll notice the choice of metals: calcium, magnesium, and zinc are all things your body needs in non-trace quantities, and is capable of regulating the level of.
Good observation.
And I'm sure they'll refine the zinc enough to get all the cadmium out of it. (All but a trace too small to matter, of course. Say: levels far below the levels that would pass the intestinal barrier from a comparable amount of an oral zinc supplement.)
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If a half pound of magnesium dissolves in 2 years, how much is that per day?
1 pound = 453.59237 grams
((453.59237 grams) / 2) / (2 years) = 0.310473688 g / day
(Thank you Google)
So around a third of a gram a day. Yeah, that's a lot larger an amount than I thought. Either it takes a lot longer than 2 years to dissolve away, or you probably need to take special cleation chemicals. And likely calcium supplements.
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.5 lb / 2 yr in g/day [google.com] would have been easier and more direct.
Or you could put it in mg/day if you wanted to compare it to the FDA recommended daily allowance [google.com].
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Do you think this thing would be your only source of magnesium? This is just about the entire recommended dose being supplied directly to the blood stream (which is a lot more efficient that digesting it).
Possibly the body contains mechanisms to not absorb magnesium in excess of it's needs...but one can't count on such. Many metals don't have any such safety regulator.
Shamylan vs. Lee (Score:3, Funny)
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Rather than having adamantium grafted to his skeleton, Wolverine [imdb.com] could have had glass grafted instead.
Man, you couldn't have included a Spoiler Alert? I was just about to start reading the Wolverine comics, but now that I know he's got an adamantium skeleton (thank you very much), I guess I'll just skip it altogether...
Ooh! Just got a M Night Shyamalan movie from Netflix starring that guy from Die Hard and that guy from Snakes on a Plane - Off to watch it!
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M Night Shyamalan
So that's how you spell it...Slashdot's commentators, almost as effective as Google's "Did you mean..." feature =)
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The only reason I knew how to spell it was the magic of IMDB [imdb.com].
[I had to go check because I almost referred to Samuel L Jackson as that guy from Pee-Wee's Playhouse and had to go verify that it was indeed Laurence Fishburne, not Jackson. Sorry Sammy. My bad - It's been a while since I watched that show.]
Dissovable (Score:3, Funny)
disimilar metal (Score:2)
Minor misuse of /in situ/ (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_situ [wikipedia.org]
In biology, in situ means to examine the phenomenon exactly in place where it occurs (i.e. without moving it to some special medium). This usually means something intermediate between in vivo and in vitro. For example, examining a cell within a whole organ intact and under perfusion may be in situ investigation. This would not be in vivo as the donor is sacrificed before experimentation, but it would not be the same as working with the cell alone (a common scenario in in vitro experiments).
That is, the use of the phrase in situ implies that the person is dead. in situ literally means "as it is," and is more synonymous with untampered. In a literal sense, the bone could heal by itself in situ, but with an implant, tampering has already occurred, and the process is actually occurring in vivo, in a live organism. It's a minor quibble, but don't use Latin when you can just say "in place," "without further intervention," or "on its own." These would have been better choices, and clearer because they are plain English.
--
Toro
Spot the English major in this post. :^)
Re:Minor misuse of /in situ/ (Score:4, Informative)
In medicine, as distinct from biology, "in situ" has long been used to mean "where it already is inside the patient's body," whether "it" is something that occurred internally (e.g. a tumor) or something that was introduced from outside (e.g. orthopedic equipment.) "Dissolvable in situ" is a phrase used to describe dissolving internal sutures, which is probably the precedent here. Sometimes it refers to things that definitely don't dissolve; as a military medic, I often ran across the usage "bullet left in situ" in older patient records ... and that sure as hell constitutes "tampering," I think you'll agree. (This is much, much rarer in modern military medicine; most such records were those of retirees from the Korean War and WW2 eras, although it still does happen even today.) You may not like the usage, but it's standard enough now that calling it a "misuse" is a mistake.
Forget this, and do the REAL thing! (Score:2)
Forget this , I am getting my adamatium bondings as soon, as quickly as I can get a few broken bones that would need to be mended.
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We can graft adaatium to your bones, no problem. Of course, it's up to you to heal instantly.
I can haz a spellchex, plz? Kthxbye (Score:4, Insightful)
Dissolvable is the proper spelling. I can be a moderator nao?
Other uses (Score:2)
Hay marge, what happened to the beer I put in the fridge?
I was just sitting there, doing my business, when the john just suddenly disappeared.
Ther were in the underwater aquarium, watching the sharks, when they became involved in a feeding frenzy after the glass partitions ceased partitioning.
I'm curious if this could sh-sh-shatter (Score:2)
If this "glass" scaffolding dissolves slowly, I'm guessing it would start out strong and get structurally weaker over time as it thins out. At some point before it is totally dissolved, it will probably be really brittle. Since it is glass-like, I'm guessing that it's possible that it could shatter even though the bone it's attached to has healed and is stronger (imagine a transverse shaking force applied to the bone like you might get when you trip and fall on the ground).
If the scaffolding does shatter
Why this is important for the US market. (Score:2, Interesting)
I engineer orthopaedic implants, and one of the things that is very interesting when considering design and excecution of implants is the culture of the physicians who will be using them.
Physicians who train in different countries (or time periods for that matter) have various preferences on what approaches they use and how they utilize certain devices. What is interesting about this case is that European surgeons are more likely to take hardware OUT of the patient after the fracture is resolved.
This is in
Impressively stupid thinking. (Score:2)
TFS speaks, as if that would mean that the stuff just "vanishes". I bet that's also what the company's marketing department and payed doctors say.
While in fact, I'd bet money that it just goes to the blood stream and then to every part of the body, where it forms new complexes, and lets the patient die 15 years later, as soon as when nobody thinks of is as a reason anymore.
Works for so many other "solutions" it's not even funny, so this would not be an exception.
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"or distribute them to poor areas of the world with mineral deficiencies"
Wouldn't it make more sense to just, I dunno, help them to get a good supply of mineral-rich foods to eat, then they would have enough calories *and* enough vitamins and minerals? Everything we need in terms of vitamins and minerals is adequately supplied with a good diet. Those people need food, not implants.
you don't know the topic (Score:2, Interesting)
certain areas of the world are naturally deficient in certain necessary elements, like iodine. other areas are naturally high in certain dangerous elements, like arsenic. it doesn't matter how much good nutrition they get from the foodstuffs of their countryside, it doesn't even matter how rich they are. if the surrounding countryside doesn't have the element (or too much of it), it doesn't have the element (or too much of it). you need a technological response to the problem, regardless of socioeconomics
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I never said all the food had to be local. Yes, I suppose, 'fortifying' some foods with minerals might be a good idea. Heck, in some cases, couldn't you add the deficient minerals to the topsoil as part of a fertilizer or something, and then it would start being in the local food? I'm just saying, a 'mineral implant' requires a medical professional of some sort (not necessarily a doctor - maybe it's something nurses could learn to do), which means that it wouldn't work for a lot of people, because they neve
why the negativity? (Score:2, Interesting)
i'm just brainstorming potential other uses for this dissolving glass. i don't understand the basis for your opposition to the idea on nothing other than "food should be nutritious" when clearly in some areas of the world, food alone simply can't deliver proper nutrition and technology is required to give people proper nutrition
its just an idea. there's a million reasons why subdural implants of time release minerals could be unworkable. but your particular reason about medical personnel doesn't fly: poor r
Re:reply (Score:4, Informative)
First, it's not clear to me that "fluid" and "liquid" have different meanings.
Second, glass is actually a solid. Flowing glass is a persistent, but untrue, urban myth.
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Glass is a liquid. Any glassblower and scientist that makes their own labware can tell you this. It has INSANE viscosity.
Then what's the difference between a liquid and solid?
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Solids have definite shape and structure and volume. Glass is amorphous, has no definite shape or structure.
Solids have a melting point. Liquids do not. Glass has no melting point.
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Sapphires are transparent aluminum. It already exists in nature.
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And water is liquid hydrogen. Yawn...
(Aluminum oxide... hydrogen oxide... see the connection?)
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Even more surprising, no one is complaining about kdawson!