Neon Nerves for Safer Surgery pg 15 (June issue)

Sorry i couldnt find the May issue at the libraries i was looking but found the june and decided we can get a head start on it because we wont have the full month to do it during June

A new technique invented by surgeon Quyen T. Nguyen turns nerves neon GREEN!!! Her team discovered a molecule that sticks to nerve cells, tagged it with a flourescent compound, and injected in into mice. Within two hours the rodents peripheral nerves stood out as if traced with neon paint and stayed that way for 6 hours! Her goal was to help reduce the number of nerves accidently nicked or severed during surgery.
Also a tokyo engineer developed a microscopic flourescent bead that binds to glucose. On humans they want to develop the technology to inject beads which last a month and the person wears a monitoring device which measures glucose levels!

How crazy is this! Makes a surgeons job a whole lot less stressful!
ima be a surgeon now

THAT AMAZING!!!
To think that we could maybe make our modern procedures for surgeries better for and more safe can save a lot of peoples lives.
My brother is a general surgeon here in Edmonton, and he still feels like as if he might kill someone in the procedure, maybe this new invention will lighten the load of stress he has!!

A very good post, thank you Kayzar

SALA!

Yeah man let your brother know! I know a guy that had reconstructive surgery on his face after he got jumped and they nicked something and his face was paralyzed for the next few weeks until he could try to get it fixed again. SAD!

but i cant imagine the pressure the surgeons would be under! Like me, i have the shakiest hands ever! id like drop my tools in the person and wouldnt find them again :S

I love how it would look though! neon greeen with red blood ! Sexy

I dont know if i could personally handle the stress of being a surgeon. With the pressure of having someones life in your hands, and the chance of making one mistake and ruining their life is just too much for me. But with this technology of making nerve cells green, making it easier for brain surgeons to perform their surgery, it would be much easier and this tremendoue stress would likely be reduced. the pressure would still be too much for me to handle. But for those who have this as a profession, this must be great news for them

That's a really awesome discovery! I have wanted to be a surgeon for quite a few years now but i have always been scared because i don't have the most steady hands... but knowing that during a serious operation any major nerves , etc, would be much easier to see is a great comfort. Of course surgeons would still need to be extremely careful, but its always good to have an extra sense of security. Now i want to be a surgeon even more haha

YES !! I am soo happy this is discovered ! I've always wanted to be a surgeon of some sort, but for the past couple of years I started leaning towards plastic surgery. So this new invention is really neat in that part of medicine ! It can also contribute to other parts of med as well like detecting any sorts of problems from early stages of cancer using this "glow in the dark" method.

I wonder what kind of effect this could have on people chemically. Even though this is a great step forward for surgical science, I also think that it would be sick to light up your brain like a pink floyd concert!!!!!!!!

yeah i agree with taylor. i wouldnt have the confidence to be a surgeon. But mark, im not sure what affect it will have on us chemically but i hope its a minor affect or it doesnt affect us at all.

But if a major surgery did go wrong... would the patient be able to sue and use more proof or how would that work?

I agree that this neon molecule will be a great help to surgeons while preforming surgeries, minimizing the chance of having to damage any normal/healthy nerves. Also, people should always choose the best surgeon that is suitable for their surgery, as this will be beneficial to the patient. For example if you were to do a heart surgery, you wouldn't want someone that specializes in the eye or someone who has perform 5-10 surgery's on the heart, you're going to want a someone who has been doing heart surgery their whole life! so this will also lead to a safer surgery. Now that this fluorescent compound is discovered, even if the surgeon does mess up ( like cutting a wrong nerve) this technique will decrease the possibility of a accident. Since this is a new discovery, and I don't think much people have experienced this yet, there could still be some side effects that we do not know of yet and can only wait to see if this new technique is really good or harmful.

In my opinion, i think that these neon nerve things will increase the chance of having a successful and a more safe surgery.

this is sweet!!!! it would help alot of different types of doctors and maybe help to ling severed ligiments together!!!!!!!!!'
maybe this is the next step to exchanging limbs???