Human exoskeleton suit helps paralyzed people walk

HAIFA, Israel (Reuters) - paralyzed for the past 20 years, former Israeli paratrooper Radi Kaiof now walks down the street with a dim mechanical hum.

That is the sound of an electronic exoskeleton moving the 41-year-old's legs and propelling him forward -- with a proud expression on his face -- as passersby stare in surprise.

"I never dreamed I would walk again. After I was wounded, I forgot what it's like," said Kaiof, who was injured while serving in the Israeli military in 1988.

"Only when standing up can I feel how tall I really am and speak to people eye to eye, not from below."

The device, called ReWalk, is the brainchild of engineer Amit Goffer, founder of Argo Medical Technologies, a small Israeli high-tech company.

Something of a mix between the exoskeleton of a crustacean and the suit worn by comic hero Iron Man, ReWalk helps paraplegics -- people paralyzed below the waist -- to stand, walk and climb stairs.

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Japanese create stem cells from wisdom teeth

Japanese scientists said Friday they had derived stem cells from wisdom teeth, opening another way to study deadly diseases without the ethical controversy of using embryos.

Researchers at the government-backed National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology said they created stem cells of the type found in human embryos using the removed wisdom teeth of a 10-year-old girl.

"This is significant in two ways," team leader Hajime Ogushi told AFP. "One is that we can avoid the ethical issues of stem cells because wisdom teeth are destined to be thrown away anyway.
"Also, we used teeth that had been extracted three years ago and had been preserved in a freezer. That means that it's easy for us to stock this source of stem cells.

The announcement follows the groundbreaking discovery by US and Japanese scientists last year that they could produce stem cells from skin, a finding that was hailed by the Vatican and US President George W. Bush.

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NuVasive to fight patent lawsuit

NuVasive, a San Diego-based company that makes products for minimally invasive spine surgery, said it plans to defend itself against a patent infringement lawsuit filed against it by competitor Medtronic Sofamor Danek.

Court filings contend that several NuVasive products infringe older patents held by Minneapolis-based Medtronic, the world's largest medical device firm.
The lawsuit should not disrupt NuVasive operations, said Alex Lukianov, chief executive officer.
“It is not surprising that Medtronic would attempt to intimidate NuVasive with this suit, since NuVasive represents a growing threat to Medtronic's spine business,” he said.
Medtronic spokeswoman Mary-Beth Thorsgaard said the suit involves 12 patents. “Medtronic respects the patents of others and we expect others to respect our patents,” she said.

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With companies such as OsteoGeneX, KC aims to be a backbone for biotech

By JASON GERTZEN
The Kansas City Star

This is a story of a scientist and a spine surgeon who teamed up to pursue a big idea.
Debra Ellies, the scientist, and Bill Rosenberg, the surgeon, now run OsteoGeneX Inc., a small Kansas City area biotechnology company.
It still is very much a startup venture, so success cannot be presumed a sure bet.
The young business is buffeted nearly every day by the need to refine or prove its science, raise money to keep going and tackle one more item on the seemingly endless to-do list of an entrepreneur.
Yet OsteoGeneX is gaining momentum.
Its eventual success could be a big deal.
A big deal for millions of women and others afflicted by the bone-weakening condition of osteoporosis.
A big deal for millions of baby boomers with worn-out joints and other patients who rely on surgeons to fuse their ailing spines or otherwise repair their injured bones.
And even a big deal to the Kansas City region, which is counting on small technology companies such as OsteoGeneX to make it big. These firms increasingly are sprouting in the area, and many offer the promise of rapid growth and good jobs that would bring a much-needed boost to the local economy.
OsteoGeneX joins a swelling roster that includes TVAX Biomedical, LLC, ImmunoGenetix Therapeutics Inc. and VasoGenix Pharmaceuticals Inc. Each is a company with good management, promising technology to solve serious health problems and initial investment-raising success, said Tom Thornton, the chief executive officer of the Kansas Bioscience Authority.
“We have a decent pipeline of companies,” Thornton said. “This is our grow-your-own strategy. Each is an example that shows we can do it in Kansas.”
Maybe one of these companies will become the next Cerner Corp., the Kansas City, North-based medical software business that has thousands of employees and more than $1 billion in annual sales. Or maybe the next Enturia Inc., a Leawood medical technology company that spun out of Marion Laboratories Inc. It eventually employed hundreds and recently was sold to Cardinal Health Inc. for nearly $500 million.
Known technology hubs such as California’s Silicon Valley or the Boston area have strong advantages in these pursuits. They are chockablock with entrepreneurs who learn from the successes, avoid the mistakes or just bounce ideas off their readily available peers.
This is not quite as easy in the Kansas City area, though the situation is improving.
OsteoGeneX shows how local biotech entrepreneurs manage in a place that the East Coast and West Coast deride as flyover country. The company’s experiences show how the region is shepherding these businesses in pursuit of building a biotech hub on this edge of Midwestern prairie

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Half of all Americans have poor eyesight: study

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Half of all Americans have some sort of vision problem, most of them myopia or astigmatism, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.
This is far higher than previous estimates, the team at the National Eye Institute reported in the Archives of Ophthalmology.
"Clinically important refractive error affects half of the U.S. population 20 years or older," wrote Susan Vitale and colleagues at the institute, one of the U.S. government's National Institutes of Health.
They analyzed data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey on 12,000 people aged 20 and older between 1999 and 2004.
More than 33 percent were nearsighted and 36 percent had astigmatism, which causes fuzzy vision, the team reported. Another 3.6 percent were farsighted, meaning they can see at a distance but not up close.
"Our estimated prevalence of myopia was higher than the 25 percent reported in previous U.S. studies and similar (in persons under 40 years) to that of ethnic Chinese persons in Singapore," they wrote.
"The direct annual cost of refractive correction for distance visual impairment is estimated to be between $3.8 and $7.2 billion for persons 12 years and older."
The study matches findings in other countries that have shown about half the population has a so-called refractive vision problem, usually requiring the use of glasses, contact lenses or corrective surgery.
The causes of these three eye conditions is unclear but there is a genetic component. Most studies discount the widely held belief that myopia is caused by too much reading or close work as a child.

Mechanical Agitation and Serial Dilution: An Option for Anterior Cruciate Ligament Graft Sterilization

By Richard D. Parker, MD; Steven D. Maschke, MDJ Knee Surg. 2008; 21:186
July 2008

ABSTRACT
Contamination of tissue grafts can occur during anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction, necessitating decontamination. This study examined whether mechanical agitation and serial dilution provides greater bacterial eradication of experimentally contaminated bone-patellar tendon-bone grafts compared with antibiotic soak or pulsatile lavage. Forty bone-patellar tendon-bone grafts were contaminated with a bacterial suspension derived from operating room floor cultures. Four groups of specimens underwent immediate culture (control), antibiotic soak, pulsatile lavage, or mechanical agitation and serial dilution. The number of colony-forming units (CFU) for each group was statistically compared using t and chi-square tests. Each method of decontamination yielded a statistically significant reduction in CFU compared with the control. Analysis of positive versus negative cultures demonstrated a statistically significant difference between mechanical agitation and serial dilution compared with the other 2 methods. Mechanical agitation and serial dilution was the only method with 0 CFU and provided superior and consistent sterilization of experimentally contaminated grafts compared with antibiotic soak and pulsatile lavage.

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$15 Million Paid to Kyphon Whistleblower

Call it the new lottery. Craig Patrick dropped a dime on his employer, Kyphon Inc., and today is splitting $15 million with Chuck Bates, another former Kyphon exec.
In his call to the authorities, Mr. Patrick questioned some of Kyphon’s sales practices. A “whistleblower” lawsuit ensued in federal court and Kyphon was accused of inflating the cost of spinal procedures in Buffalo, New York, and throughout the nation. Kyphon’s new owner, Medtronic, settled the case for $75 million.

A different whistleblower in a case against National Air Cargo received $3.3 million. Approximately 25% of all whistleblower cases result in payouts to the whistleblower.
This is a relatively new phenomenon, but it is increasingly causing more and more examples of employees “dropping the dime” on their employer. For all concerned—the company, the whistleblower, and the reimbursing agencies—these are highly expensive and potentially career ending activities.

These cases take three to four uncomfortable years. As Patrick related to a reporter in Buffalo earlier this year; “It’s a very stressful process, from beginning to end. While the lawsuit is pending, you’re not supposed to tell anyone about it. You’re wondering if your work friends will ever speak to you again, and some won’t.” Patrick now lives in Hudson, Wisconsin.
The case that resulted in the Kyphon whistleblower suit came from cases where Kyphon sales people persuaded doctors and hospitals to keep patients overnight in order to receive an additional $10,000 in Medicare payments—despite the fact that the procedure can be performed on an outpatient basis.

Kyphon and, subsequently, Medtronic officials did not admit to defrauding the government.
One in four. Those are the odds currently of winning the whistleblower lottery. More than 130 surgeons are being sued in a recently unsealed whistleblower lawsuit. The Department of Justice has announced that it is targeting surgeons who request payment for services that are suspiciously tied to purchases of products.

If any surgeon or company thinks these aren’t serious times, they are whistling past the graveyard.

Can 97,142 VCF Patients Be Wrong?

Talk about a kick-ass ‘n’. n= 97,142. If you can’t learn something from 97,142 VCF patients, then all is lost. Thanks to Edmund Lau, M.S., Kevin Ong, Ph.D., Steven Kurtz, Ph.D., Jordana Schmier, M.A., and Av Edidin, Ph.D.—all from Exponent, Inc., we have solid information about the continuum of care for elderly patients with vertebral compression fractures (VCF).

Incidentally and not surprisingly, Kyphon contributed a bit more than $10,000 to sponsor the research. The researchers from Exponent conducted a retrospective data analysis of 97,142 Medicare patients with vertebral compression fractures from 1997 through 2004. Controls were matched for age, sex, race, and Medicare buy-in status, with a five-to-one control-case ratio.

The survival of a patient was measured from the earliest date of a new fracture until death or until the end of the study. The patients with a fracture were compared with the controls by calculation of the mortality rates, with use of Kaplan-Meier analysis and the Cox regression method. Demographic subpopulation analysis and analysis by comorbidity levels were performed as well.

What did the researchers find? They learned that Medicare patients with a vertebral fracture had twice the mortality rate of the matched controls. Only 10.5% of the VCF patients survived seven years after fracture. Furthermore, the mortality risk following a fracture was greater for men than for women.
The study was published in JBJS and is available in CD form and, I’m sure, can be obtained from Kyphon (Medtronic) or from Exponent, Inc.

2nd Annual Contemporary Issues in Partial Knee Arthroplasty (CIPKA)

September 5-6, 2008
Mount Carmel New Albany Surgical Hospital
New Albany, Ohio




Partial knee arthroplasty (PKA) has enjoyed a renewed interest in the last decade. Isolated medial, lateral, and patellofemoral arthroplasty are all becoming the norm for the treatment of compartmental disease. Additionally, bicompartmental arthroplasty has been introduced in an effort to preserve the normal ligamentous structures in appropriate knees. A combination of improved results over previous experiences, newer devices such as mobile bearing PKA and newer patellofemoral replacement designs, and improved implantation techniques including minimally invasive alternatives have driven this excitement. Debate continues to surround, however, the appropriate indications for PKA, particularly involving the patellofemoral joint.

This continuing medical education event will focus on the contemporary issues in PKA, featuring not only traditional didactic lectures but also live surgical demonstrations, and an opportunity for participants to perform these procedures in a human fresh-tissue cadaver laboratory. The indications, contraindications, and outcomes of medial, lateral, patellofemoral, and bicompartmental replacements will be reviewed by a faculty of worldwide experts.

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