Wednesday, December 21, 2011

New Technology for Rapidly Diagnosing Strokes

It just takes university students to come up with a better and faster way to diagnose a stroke. I'm sure they could come up with hyperacute treatments, let em at it. So which one is better, this or the hand-held brain bleed detector?
http://www.talkingscience.org/2011/12/new-technology-for-diagnosing-strokes-rapidly/
In August, the 2011 Cincinnati Innovates competition announced a group of engineering and design students from University of Cincinnati were winners of a $5,000 Northern Kentucky Vision 2015 Award and $10,000 from Taft Legal/Patent Award for creating the Ischiban Headband used for diagnosing strokes.

A stroke happens when blood flow to a part of the brain stops. If blood flow is stopped for longer than a few seconds, the brain cannot get blood and oxygen. There are two types of strokes: ischemic and hemorrhagic. Ischemic strokes occur when a blood vessel that supplies blood to the brain is blocked by a blood clot. This blot clot may have formed either because the artery is already very narrow (thrombotic stroke), or a clot may break off from another place in the blood vessels of the brain and travel up to the brain (embolic stroke). A hemorrhagic stroke occurs when a blood vessel in part of the brain becomes weak and bursts open, causing blood to leak to the brain. About 80% of all strokes are ischemic.
The correct diagnosis is vital. If drugs that are used to treat an ischemic stroke are given to a patient with a hemorrhagic stroke, it can be fatal. This is because these drugs are used to thicken or thin the blood, depending on what caused the stroke. Strokes become more dangerous as time goes on. Therefore, immediate care is crucial. Symptoms include slurred speech; a droopy eye or mouth; weakness on one side; headache; changes in alertness, hearing and taste; and confusion or loss of memory. Generally, stroke symptoms depend on what part of the brain is being damaged. Symptoms usually develop suddenly. Symptoms are usually most severe when the stroke first happens, but in some cases, they gradually get worse.
Before 2011, a brain scan was typically used to identify the type of stroke a patient had suffered. However, it takes hours to receive the result from this method -- during which time the stroke is getting increasingly more dangerous. The new device, developed by Pooja Kadambi, Joe Lovelace, and Scott Robinson, is called Ischiban. It uses a technique called impedance spectroscopy, which measures how waves of energy flow through different tissue or materials to analyze what’s going on deep inside the skull. The energy is a mild electric current produced by up to ten electrodes in the headband. Within minutes, the results are fed to a laptop connected to the headband. On the laptop, the results are in an easy-to-read chart that tells doctors what type of stroke it is. Electrical Impedance was originally invented by Oliver Heaviside in 1886. However, it was newly applied to diagnosing strokes in 2011.
The headband is not painful, but it applies slight pressure to the patient’s head when wearing it. The impedance spectroscopy device has been tested on a small group of healthy volunteers, showing that the technique can produce images of the brain rapidly. This device is not yet available for use. Clinical trials are going to be set up in the near future to examine how it performs during stroke diagnosis.

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