Tattoo Removal Goes Ultrasonic

So ... let's say you get a stupid tattoo -- or one which could potentially get you sued by the nose-less, baby-dangling King of Pop. Of course you can get tattoos removed these days, but it's something of an ordeal. Time was, it could also cause serious scarring, but technology just keeps getting better.

The latest news in tattoo removal involves ultrasonic measures. Getting tattooed is rather simple. The ink contains carbon particles, which are suspended in water. That water diffuses when the ink is introduced to your skin through the needle. The ink itself then spreads into the surrounding tissue. It is literally embedded in your skin, which makes removing it quite difficult.

These days, abrasion, surgical removal, and laser treatment are the most commonly used techniques. However, even as advanced as they are, infection is still a high risk, as is scarring. Recently, however, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh has come up with what he says is a completely non invasive technique for tattoo removal. Specifically, ultrasound is used to collapse the particles of pigment, thus removing a lot of the ink.

Medical Center Implements New Technology

Vanderbilt University’s Medical Center’s Center for Experiential Learning and Assessment is implementing some exciting new technology which promises to be groundbreaking for medical students and physiologists. A new, twelve thousand square foot lab has just been constructed – at the cost of five and a half million dollars.

The new lab contains two programs: the Program in Human Simulation and the Simulation Technologies Program. The former will allow students to go through clinical practices, which will lead to improvements in their interpersonal skills.

Mannequins will be used to simulate human patients. They are computer based and, as such, are physiologically similar to humans. The individual mannequins will be used to portray individual patients, not to mention family members, doctors, nurses, and any other people students will be in contact with during real time and real life situations.

MBI Breast Cancer Technology

There’s some brand new technology out, beneficial to women. It’s a new screening tool, designed to detect breast cancer. The clincher is that it can work three times better than the typical mammogram, thereby finding tumors faster and earlier. Furthermore, it can find tumors in women who have very dense breast tissue, which mammography has had problems with for years.

A mammogram is essentially an X-ray of a woman’s breasts. In comparison with the new technology, the old standard was found to find less than one third of the tumors discovered by the new technique.

The technique is called molecular breast imaging – MBI for short. It promises to make the process of finding breast cancer tumors faster, easier, and less invasive. For instance, patience will no longer need to be injected with the radioactive agents, which are absorbed by the tissue and used to make the tumors themselves show up in the X-ray. Instead, MBI uses cameras. It has a very low risk of radiation, but the makers are working to make even that small risk a non issue.

New Advances in Lasik Surgery

There’s good news for people with bad eyesight and about four thousand dollars burning a whole in their pockets.
More and more people are wearing glasses and/or contacts these days – we’re probably going to evolve that way. A couple hundred years from now – if the whole joint hasn’t burned up and burned out by then – babies will probably get fitted for glasses as soon as they pop out of the womb. It’s a technological hazard. We spend a heck of a lot of time looking at computer screens. On an average day, I spend at least nine hours staring at WordPerfect (shut up, I know it sucks but I like it) or web pages while I research the effects of green tea or specs on a 2005 Benz.
Lasik eye surgery is becoming a popular alternative to glasses and contacts, especially since people are having to get bifocals and the like earlier in their lives than ever. The FDA has improved a new, very advanced machine used in laser eye surgery, though. It’s called the Allegretto Wave Eye-Q and it can cut into or shape the cornea in half the time other, older machines take. It even nixes the worry most people have about lasik – that they’ll move during surgery and end up playing Captain Jack Sparrow for Halloween for the rest of their lives. If the eye happens to move, this machine stops. Use of this machine also makes it possible for patients to recover faster.