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Sci Tech
Stopping internal bleeding sans surgery
RESEARCHERS AT the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory are working on a device that could find and stop internal bleeding, without surgery.
At the meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Dr. Shahram Vaezy and his colleagues presented research on using traditional ultrasound to image internal bleeding combined with High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) as an effective method of stopping the bleeding.
Currently, techniques to stop bleeding include manually sealing off the vessel with stitches, using electrical current to generate heat which seals off blood vessels, or using a topical agent.
However, all of these technologies require an incision in the skin in order to reach the bleeding.
HIFU works by generating a lot of heat very quickly (70 degrees C in less than a second), causing biological tissues where the ultrasound is focused to shrink and fuse together, stopping bleeding.
The HIFU treatment does not require an incision because ultrasound passes through tissue, allowing researchers to focus the cauterising heat at the point inside the body where they want to stop the bleeding.
In addition to stopping bleeding in blood vessels, Vaezy's team has been able to show that HIFU can safely stop bleeding in solid organs like the liver and spleen, where current techniques are not effective.
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