Getting Closer to Mass Production of Bones, Organs, and Implants
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Really sad to hear that this is also a "can't have nice things" situation.
From what I can gather it's a piece a little over 10cm in diameter and resides above her ear.
Titanium is MR-compatible: the magnet won't rip the plate out of your head, which is good. However, it can cause huge artifacts that obscure things around the titanium implant (and, sometimes, depending on the scan parameters and implant location, elsewhere too).
This is particularly annoying because the implants are often right near the areas you really want to image....
http://www.materialise.com/en/medical/patient-specific-impla...
You'd think a liver would be the easiest organ to grow since in adults a liver can regrow from a healthy piece. That's why you sometimes read about people donating part of their liver.
I think there will always be one big problem and that's the health of the patient. People who need a new organ are so sick they probably won't survive the operation to get a new organ. Anesthetic is like a controlled drug overdose but add age and poor health I can't imagine being an anesthesiologist that's one tough job!
crowns and teeth implants should be a lot easier than other organs or bones
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/04/06/dentis...
(especially for such a small amount of material, material with a lot of requirements, bio-compatibility, durability, etc)
This is prohibitive for many people. I wonder if advances in robotics can be coupled with lower implant costs to provide a significantly lower cost alternative. Robotics can help lower dentist fees (lower skill level) and also limit or eliminate malpractice risks by limiting human's role.
Not everyone would want the robot-driven implant from just out of dental school nurse, but I think it can be a decent option for many patients.
The material is interesting - it starts off as a lavender color, but after curing in the oven you get a shade which is a close match to your natural tooth color (they have charts/samples to pick a match before the milling is done).
Do you mean that it costs a patient USD1800 to get a crown?
I have two crowns both made and installed at the same dental practice in Drammen, Norway, using, I think, the CEREC system. At one time he had a screen mounted above the couch so that you could see it being shaped while you waited.
Including the initial consultation, the crown itself, and the fitting I paid about NOK5000 each. That's about USD580 at today's exchange rate, about USD750 at the rate that was in force when I had them done.
That's what he charges and gets paid. Of that, the insurance company will pay around half, with the patient paying the rest.
Compared to medical billing in the US, it's a miracle of clarity. I suspect because people are more willing to change dentists, and even with a sore tooth, they're willing to pick someone who is better/cheaper. So there's some price pressure by the customer.
i think it is usually around 600-800 USD for the root canal treatment and around 1000 for the crown
But it still seems to me that you are being seriously ripped off in the US.
Dentists have been successful in limiting the number of dentists, so decent ones can charge good money.
The terrifying thing is that they tend to do a lot more out of pocket business than doctors/hospitals and so the prices for dental care are generally lower than the prices for similar healthcare (they often do first appointment x-rays for free, or for cheap; hospitals will charge $200+ just for something that needs 2 or 3 x-rays).
In other words, an ordinary professional engineer, who considered extending his formal education? Bit of a gaffe, there.
If you read the article skeptically, there isn't any news here - nothing that hasn't been reported prior to the last 2 or 3 years.
The big news will be when we can fabricate complex organs, significant patches of skin with features like hair follicles or fingerprints, etc. Notice that even the liver reference was just some liver tissue that was implanted in a mouse - not an actual liver or a human trial.
What about Synborg or Synthorg? Maybe Pseudosynth.
J/k. I like "biot" that someone else mentioned.
organorgs ?
I couldn't help but think of Juicero's $120m to design a flat mechanical press.
(yes, supply chain etc, but still...)