SlashGear

Given the current climate of litigation, it’s actually statistically more dangerous to attempt to resuscitate an unconscious person in the street than it is to dance naked in a pit of angry, poisonous snakes.  Get one thing wrong and before you know it, you’re up in the dock trying to explain why jabbing someone in the throat with the barrel of a biro seemed like a great idea at the time.  Luckily, impromptu medical calamity should soon be a thing of the bleary eyed past, as we all get our hands on EMI’s 911 rCard.

As is obvious from the picture and the name, it’s a credit card sized slab of medical-documentation goodness.  Scroll keys allow for navigating multiple pages of allergies, current medication and charts from recent scans and tests.  Should the USB-rechargeable battery go dead, the toll-free number on the back links to the subscription-based EMI service, who for $20 a year will keep your information updated and available should you fall to the ground after drinking far too many carbonated beverages.

Continued »

Phantom Limb Pain (PLP) is something difficult to conceptualise if you’ve not experienced it.  People who haven’t had to have parts of their body amputated don’t immediately understand that, when injury is experienced somewhere on them, it’s the brain that registers what we know of as “pain”.  Yet for amputees it can be a debilitating problem, with incredible episodes of chronic discomfort that cannot be treated due to the limb not actually being present.  Until now it’s been almost impossible to deal with; however, researchers at the University of Manchester, UK, have given sufferers a fake limb – not made of rubber or plastic, but experienced through virtual reality.

Continued »

The world’s first surgery in zero-gravity on a human patient will be performed this Wednesday by a team of French doctors. The surgery will be performed on the European aircraft, Zero-G, which has been designed to simulate gravity-free conditions by flying up and down in a parabolic pattern. This creates between 20 to 22 seconds of weightlessness at the top of each curve, a process they will repeat around 30 times for the three-hour inflight surgery. The doctors are only allowed to work during these zero-g intervals. From looking at the diagram below, I would think anti-motion-sickness pills and barf bags are a must.

Zero-G Surgery [Via: MedGadget]