Man lives for 100 days with artificial titanium heart in successful new trial

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/12/health/australia-artificial-heart-100-days-intl-hnk/index.html

https://bivacor.com/

Yeah, read about it. It's gonna be a real game changer for the people awaiting transplants. A true miracle of technology.

 

‘Amazing’ reduction in Alzheimer’s risk verified by blood markers, study says

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Today, after a complete revamp of her lifestyle and overall health, Ashford’s struggles with retrieving words have eased, while measures of amyloid and tau proteins and neuroinflammation — all hallmark signs of Alzheimer’s — have fallen.

Ashford knows about these improvements because she’s part of a unique study tracking her progress via key blood biomarkers now being used to help diagnose early dementia. Instead of relying on painful spinal taps and expensive brain scans, these blood tests are heralded as a new, less invasive and time-consuming way to determine risk and aid in an earlier diagnosis of Alzheimer’s.

 

Smartphone use could reduce dementia risk in older adults, study finds

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Some have claimed that digital technology could negatively impact cognitive abilities, but researchers from Baylor University have discovered just the opposite.

 

US doctor removes 23 contact lenses stuck in eye like ‘stack of pancakes’


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The patient, who is in her 70s, had been avoiding regular visits with her eye doctor because she was afraid of being infected with Covid-19, Kurteeva told the Today Show. When she finally came into Kurteeva’s practice in early September, the woman said she felt something foreign in her right eye.

 

This is huge! ... I'm quite sensitive to motion sickness :

Scientists find unique sound alleviates motion sickness

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“Our study demonstrated that short-term stimulation using a unique sound called ‘sound spice®’ alleviates symptoms of motion sickness, such as nausea and dizziness,” Kagawa said.

“The effective sound level falls within the range of everyday environmental noise exposure, suggesting that the sound technology is both effective and safe.”

 

A rather weird "pastime", for anyone. But one that will possibly lead to very outcomes results for everyone:

'Unparalleled' snake antivenom made from man bitten 200 times


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In total, Mr Friede has endured more than 200 bites and more than 700 injections of venom he prepared from some of the world's deadliest snakes, including multiple species of mambas, cobras, taipans and kraits.

 

WeightWatchers files for bankruptcy as fat-loss jabs boom

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WeightWatchers said it will remain "fully operational" during the process with "no impact to members".

It follows the meteoric rise in popularity of weight loss injections in what the firm said was a "rapidly changing weight management landscape".

 

 

Men more likely to die of "broken heart syndrome" compared to women, study finds



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The condition, formally known as Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, is associated with severe emotional distress or stressful events, such as the death of a loved one. Symptoms typically include chest discomfort, shortness of breath, heart palpitations and arrhythmia, or irregular heartbeat.

 

A new diabetes treatment could free people from insulin injections
In a small trial, 10 of 12 type 1 diabetes patients no longer needed supplemental insulin

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“This is a landmark study — this cannot be overstated,” says Giacomo Lanzoni, a diabetes researcher at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine who was not involved in the new work. These lab-grown cells can successfully treat diabetes, he says, and the technique to make them can be scaled up. That opens the door to restoring insulin production for many people with the disease.

 

Weird swelling of man's fingers and toes revealed cancer had 'completely replaced' the bones with lesions


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Scans of the man's affected hand and foot revealed "destructive lytic lesions that had completely replaced" the bones in the tips of the middle finger and big toe. Lytic lesions are areas where bone has been destroyed, leaving holes or blank spaces in the skeleton. Such lesions are typically driven by a disease process like cancer.

 

From my experience with losing several close and extended family members to cancer it is common for metastasized cancer in bones. Usually though in the torso's vertebra and ribs for lung and breast cancer. Or the jaw and surrounding bones for throat and mouth cancers. Can't recall ever hearing of it in the distal extremities. Most actual bone cancers that I can recall started in the long bones of the upper leg or arm before metastasizing. I was extremely fortunate that my kidney cancer was removed while still encapsulated and before it was able to metastasize. They did not remove my prostate cancer but nuked it by very precise robotic gamma radiation using the "CyberKnife" computerized robotic process instead of the general radiation method which can cause some problems due to bathing the entire area with radiation. I have now been cancer free for over 10 years which is the common window for possible recurrences. I hope I stay that way...

 

Sam;
And did your insurance covered the procedure?
Would Medicare cover it?

 

Yes, to both, the CyberKnife at local hospital and Nephrectomy @ Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville FL by United Healthcare insurance. Dunno about Medicare. I did have to pay quite a bit even after insurance out of pocket but not sure how much. UH with the Georgia Teacher's Retirement over a year ago decided Mayo is no longer covered due to their inability to come to agreement on payment for charges (discount to United Healthcare). Lots of PO'd folks with UH who were Mayo Patients here in SE Georgia. It was ~2-hour drive to Mayo instead of going to Emory in Atlanta which is ~6-8-hour drive (depending on traffic) and overnight stay. Care at Mayo far exceeds what is locally available IF you can get into Mayo's treatment. I went there for 2nd opinion on Partial Nephrectomy which they do not do and convinced me to get it completely removed.

 

Well, I also got a Medicare Advantage plan under UH.
I am nervously awaiting my prostate biopsy results, have to wait until the 28th for the doctor to provide the results.
Although I suspect that if they had found something malignant, they would have already called.
Or so I hope.

 

Although I suspect that if they had found something malignant, they would have already called.

That's probably most likely the case ... *fingers crossed*

 

The C word scares the hell out of you. But with regular PSA tests Prostate Cancer is almost always survivable. As my Urologist told me "Hey, no no don't worry, if you've gotta have Cancer, Prostate is the one to have. You won't die from it." It's the guys who don't have regular checkups and don't come in to see the doctor until they're really hurting that get into trouble because they waited until it was very advanced and sometimes too late to remediate. The PSA blood test is the key and when mine got up to 7 my primary care physician sent me to see the Urologist for a biopsy. So, get tested yearly if you're over 40. It sure beats the alternative... The bad part was that when they did all the MRI imaging to program the robotic gamma knife, it also showed my kidney cancer. But the Oncologist doing the CyberKnife was keyed in on my prostate and didn't see it. My primary care physician caught it a couple of years later in an ultrasound they did of my abdomen as I had no symptoms at all. I was very very lucky!

 

I can think of one type of cancer that is even better to have than prostate. I had a growth in my hand that was growing and getting to the point it was really interfering with things. So I went to a hand specialist and he said that it was either a cancerous cyst or Dupuytrens disease and that they wouldn't know until the got in there, but that I should hope for it to be a cancerous cyst, because they are always benign and, once removed, don't come back, but Dupuytrens always comes back. I wasn't lucky -- it was Dupuytrens. Sure enough, it came back and I had to have it removed again, and not I've got do lumps in my other hand that are to the point where I'm going to have to have them removed.

 

I also have several non-cancerous Lipomas (fatty tumors) just under the skin scattered about. I had the first walnut sized one removed from my neck when I was in my 20s. I had a couple on the tops of my shoulders that I called my shoulder pads that kept growing and started becoming pretty noticeable under my shirts. Had the right one removed first several years ago when it got to be fist-sized and a couple of years later the left after it also became fist-sized. One on the side of my chest that was ~6" in diameter and maybe a couple inches thick was there for several decades and then disappeared/reabsorbed. One doctor told me of a patient of his that had a football sized one on his neck that he used as a pillow. My mother also had several in her later years. And, yeah, I've got Dupuytren's disease (the Viking disease) as well in both hands but it hasn't been a problem for over 40 years until recently. Started having "Trigger Finger" where the finger gets curled up and won't straighten back out on its own and hurts. Just holding fork at the table would cause it. First one hand and about a year later the other hand. The doctor sticks a hypodermic needle full of lidocaine and cortisone between the affected fingers knuckle and the adjacent one down to where the Dupuytren's has affected the tendon sheath and is locking up the tendon and viola, its back to normal again. Hurts like crap when he does it until the Lidocaine kicks in but worth the momentary pain to get rid of the repetitive pain of locking up several times a day. Getting old can be such fun but better than the alternative...

 

Cancer cells go up in flames—thanks to this deep-sea sugar

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Scientists have discovered a sugar compound from deep-sea bacteria that can destroy cancer cells in a dramatic way. This natural substance, produced by microbes living in the ocean, causes cancer cells to undergo a fiery form of cell death, essentially making them self-destruct.