Image Caption: Johns Hopkins undergraduates invented this abdominal suturing tool, called FastStitch, to guide the placement of stitches and guard against the accidental puncture of internal organs. Credit: JHU
After a surgeon stitches up a patient’s abdomen, costly complications — some life-threatening — can occur. To cut down on these postoperative problems, Johns Hopkins undergraduates have invented a disposable suturing tool to guide the placement of stitches and guard against the accidental puncture of internal organs.
Sridevi Sarma’s research focuses on a system with three components: electrodes implanted in the brain, which are connected by wires to a neurostimulator or battery pack, and a sensing device, also located in the brain implant, which detects when a seizure is starting and activates the current to stop it. (Credit: Illustration by Greg Stanley/JHU)
Epilepsy affects 50 million people worldwide, but in a third of these cases, medication cannot keep seizures from occurring. One solution is to shoot a short pulse of electricity to the brain to stamp out the seizure just as it begins to erupt. But brain implants designed to do this have run into a stubborn problem: too many false alarms, triggering unneeded treatment. To solve this, Johns Hopkins biomedical engineers have devised new seizure detection software that, in early testing, significantly cuts the number of unneeded pulses of current that an epilepsy patient would receive.
