surgery

Do you have a cochlear implant? An intraocular lens in your eye? A prosethetic leg with microservos? You may not realize it, but you're standing on the front line of a new age of medical augmentation, one that's raising a host of complex questions.

Who owns the expensive implant that allows you to hear or see better or the sleek thin blades that let you sprint faster? How are upgrades to your device handled? What happens to you and your device if that company goes out of business? Do the answers change if the procedure is elective rather than life-saving?

No one has easy answers, or even much beyond informed speculation -- certainly not the doctors we spoke to for this article or the medical students who addressed medical augmentation at a Defcon 20 session last month in Las Vegas. But all agree on one thing: A new frontier of medical augmentation isn't just coming sooner than you think. It's already here, as society moves from medically necessary augmentation to elective procedures. Call it human hacking. … Read more

Microsoft's Kinect has in recent years spawned hundreds of side hack projects. This week, a group of researchers and surgeons out of London is piloting a project developed alongside Microsoft Research to enable touchless viewing and manipulation of images while performing vascular surgery.

During complex aneurysm procedures, a computer program takes a 3D image of a patient's anatomy and produces several 2D images taken from different angles. The Kinect tech then enables surgeons to operate those images using gesture and voice alone.

The benefits are two-fold: surgeons can more easily maintain a sterile environment when they don't … Read more

Because so many readers are beautiful -- or at least confident in their rugged looks -- they may not have recently considered a chinplant.

This is not an aggressive move in wrestling. It is a cosmetic surgery procedure that makes your face look less saggy. It costs around $7,000 and I'm sure the results are as stunning as all other forms of cosmetic surgery.

The reason for an alleged surge in chinplants is people's obsession with their smartphones.

As the Daily Mail tells it, leading plastic surgeons believe that technology is at the heart of droopy faces. … Read more

People are willing to tweet just about anything -- in 2009, Erykah Badu famously tweeted away during labor, and just this past month, the National Zoo live-tweeted the artificial insemination of a giant panda.

So it should come as no surprise that earlier today folks at the Houston-based Memorial Hermann Hospital live-tweeted via the handle @houstonhospital the "rabid play-by-play" of the removal of a tumor from a 21-year-old woman's brain.

The procedure spanned several hours and resulted in dozens of tweets, video uploads on YouTube, and a dizzying array of graphic photos via Twitter and Pinterest.

Dr. … Read more

Being obese can bring on a wide range of health complications, some less obvious than others.

So when a physician in Houston asked bioengineering students at Rice University to help relieve his obese patients' burden of breathing during surgery, the idea "sounded a little weird," said senior Norman Truong, according to a press release. But his team, calling themselves R-Aides, took on the challenge.

The resulting device literally lifts the burden obese patients carry on their abdomens during surgery by using a simple suspension device that consists of suction cups attached to a horizontal beam and tied in … Read more

With oral sex on the rise, oral cancer is also up, and by as much as 25 percent in the past few years alone--particularly among otherwise healthy 30- to 50-year-old nonsmokers, according to Mayo Clinic researchers. That's the bad news.

The goods news is that this rise is largely attributed to types of oral cancer caused by the human papillomavirus, or HPV, which tend to be less aggressive and more responsive to treatment than the oral cancers traditionally seen in older patients who have been smoking and/or drinking for decades. What's more, the most common, called oropharyngeal cancer, … Read more

The iPhone is, primarily, a mirror to your soul.

Some people, though, see it as a mirror to their face. Which is, no doubt, why a sensitively enterprising plastic surgeon has created a special procedure so that you can look more attractive while you're on FaceTime.

I can feel your face wrinkling already, but perhaps you are one of the world's facially confident.

Dr. Robert Sigal of the Austin-Weston Center for Cosmetic Surgery in Virginia, on the other hand, knows just how vast a problem FaceTime self-consciousness truly is.

The spark?

"It came from my wife," … Read more

Eye drops are so 1.0. Not only can they be messy and inconvenient to apply, they deliver medicine to treat dryness and other issues in imprecise volumes so quickly that they need to be reapplied every few hours.

And for those applying eye drops after laser eye surgery--when the eyes are especially tender--they can be a real pain.

Which is why researchers at the University of Florida are working to design contact lenses already helpful in protecting the eyes post-surgery that can extend the release time of anesthesia to help with this post-surgery pain.

The trick, chemist Anuj Chauhan … Read more

Happy Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Day! Actually, that probably means none of you are listening to our show today. You're likely at your local Costco, Sam's Club, or other restaurant supply depot stocking up on Twizzlers and Four Loko for the next two weeks of gaming hibernation.

But if you're ready for a break, today we'll tell you how to case business interiors for your next B&E using Google+ and GMaps, access the hidden panorama mode in the iOS5 camera app, pay $19 for a truly unlimited everything cell phone plan, and why you probably shouldn't let a cowboy doctor in the UK shine a laser in your beautiful brown eyes.

Stream or download today's podcast after the break!… Read more