Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Micro-motors Small Enough to be Injected Into Human Bloodstream

And pretty soon we'll have nanobots of Star Trek fame swimming in our arteries. and I like the picture at the link.
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/265569
A range of complex surgical operations necessary to treat stroke victims, confront hardened arteries or address blockages in the bloodstream are about to be made safer .
Researchers from the Micro/Nanophysics Research Laboratory at Australia’s Monash University are about to put the final touches to the design of micro-motors small enough to be injected into the human bloodstream. This will make a range of complex surgical operations necessary to treat stroke victims, confront hardened arteries or address blockages in the bloodstream, safer. A research paper, published today, Tuesday, 20 January, in IOP Publishing’s Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering details how researchers are harnessing piezoelectricity, the energy force most commonly used to trigger-start a gas stove, to produce microbot motors just 250 micrometres, a quarter of a millimetre, wide. Methods of minimally invasive surgery, such as keyhole surgery and a range of operations that utilise catheters, tubes inserted into body cavities to allow surgical manoeuvrability, are preferred by surgeons and patients because of the damage avoided when contrasted against cut and sew operations. It is not always possible to avoid serious damage during minimally invasive surgery and surgeons are often limited by, for example, the width of a catheter tube which, in serious cases, can fatally puncture narrow arteries. Remote controlled miniature robots small enough to swim up arteries could save lives by reaching parts of the body, like a stroke-damaged cranial artery, that catheters have previously been unable to reach (because of the labyrinthine structure of the brain that catheters are too immobile to safely reach). When the right sensor equipment is attached to the microbot motor, the surgeon’s view of, for example, a patient’s troubled artery can be enhanced and the ability to work remotely also increases the surgeon’s dexterity. As Professor James Friend, leader of the research team at Monash University, explained, motors have lagged behind in the age of technological miniaturisation and provide the key to making robots small enough for injection into the bloodstream. Friend said “If you pick up an electronics catalogue, you’ll find all sorts of sensors, LEDs, memory chips, etc that represent the latest in technology and miniaturisation. Take a look however at the motors and there are few changes from the motors available in the 1950s.” Friend and his team began their research over two years ago in the belief that piezoelectricity was the most suitable energy force for micro-motors because the engines can be scaled down while remaining forceful enough, even at the sizes necessary to enter the bloodstream, for motors to swim against the blood’s current and reach spots difficult to operate upon. Piezoelectricity is most commonly found in quartz watches and gas stoves. It is based on the ability of some materials to generate electric potential in response to mechanical stress. In the case of a gas stove, the ignition switch on a stove triggers a spring to release a ball that smashes against a piece of piezoelectric material, often kinds of crystal, which translates the force of the ball into more than 10,000 volts of electricity which then travels down wires, reaches the gas, and starts the stove fire. As Friend explains, “Opportunities for micro-motors abound in fields as diverse as biomedicine, electronics, aeronautics and the automotive industry. Responses to this need have been just as diverse, with designs developed using electromagnetic, electrostatic, thermal and osmotic driving forces. Piezoelectric designs however favourable scaling characteristics have and, in general, are simple designs, which have provided an excellent platform for the development of micro-motors.” The team has produced prototypes of the motors and is now working on ways to improve the assembly method and the mechanical device which moves and controls the micro-motors.

So lets just have them swimming in our arteries all the time ablating all the plaque, no need for stenting.
What could go wrong?

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