Category Archives: Biomedical Engineering

Biomedical Engineering

Heart Disease Blog Disappears

The heart disease news blog that I linked to not long ago has mysteriously disappeared. Luckily, I still have the last few news items in my aggregator. Unluckily, they pretty much lack references now. Those that I can rediscover references for, I will post below:

  • High intake of vegetable protein linked with lower blood pressure – A recent epidemiological study found that a high intake of vegetable protein correlated with low blood pressure.
  • Low blood pressure might not be good if you already have some heart failure – where the article in the previous bullet points out what is normally considered advantageous — low blood pressure in a healthy system — it turns out that low blood pressure in heart failure is associated with higher mortality, per this American Heart Journal article.

That’s it. If you know why that blog was shut down, please comment or send me an email.

Guidant Merger Madness

medGadget has an article on the continuing merger madness occurring with Guidant. For those of you not familiar with the company, they’re one of the top manufacturers of ICDs in the world. As the timeline that medGadget links to briefly notes, Boston Scientific and Johnson & Johnson have been fighting over the company for a while, despite their recent issues with faulty device programming.

New process for creating biocompatible fibers

Biosingularity » Scientists develop process for creating biocompatible fibers

Scientists at Virginia Tech have developed a single-step process for creating nonwoven fibrous mats from a small organic molecule – creating a new nanoscale material with potential applications where biocompatible materials are required, such as scaffolds for tissue growth and drug delivery.

This is an important step forward.  Incidentally, I just started my cell and tissue engineering class (in which I am a student), and read an article on something similar yesterday for that class.  Apparently, most cells prefer to be suspended in an intricate, tangled web of fibers, rather than sitting on a relatively flat surface.  This article discusses a new method for making tangled webs of fibers.

Furthermore, anything not of the body that is placed in the body is generally attacked by the immune system. As these fibers are made from the very stuff of cell membranes, there’s a good chance that they’ll be well-accepted in vivo.  They have not, per the article, been tested for biocompatibility or cytotoxicity yet.

I’ve added that blog to my aggregator. If you have an interest in bioscience, you might take a look at it as well.

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Video Archive of Lectures by Experts on Cardiac Bioelectricity and Arrhythmias

During our time at Washington University in St.Louis, I had the opportunity to attend many of the lectures given by the Cardiac Bioelectricity and Arrhythmia Center (CBAC).  I noticed that they digitally record video and audio from all of these lectures. Luckily, these are posted online, so that I may continue to follow the series even though I have returned to Tulane.

These are some of the top people in the field, presenting cutting-edge research. If you have an interest in cardiac electrophysiology, I highly recommend that you watch these videos.

CBAC – Education – Video Archives

All material within each video file was filmed during a Cardiac Bioelectricity and Arrhythmia Center (CBAC) seminar at Washington University in St. Louis. It was made available on this website with permission from the speaker, who reserves and holds all rights. The video files are for educational purposes only and may not reproduced, distributed or copied in any format.

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