One, for incontinence, was a ball-like device used to prop up tissue around the urethra.
To test their technology, Rabiner and Hare used it to experimentally treat prostate enlargement, where the prostate grows and compresses the urethra.
As an example, using this system they're able to use a much higher number of stitches than humanly possible when reconnecting the urethra.
Others are treated with ureteroscopy, in which a scope is passed through the urethra and bladder and up the ureter into the kidney.
Complicating matters further: The urethra passes through the center of the prostate and must be reconnected back to the bladder once the prostate is removed.
Delivering acoustic energy through the urethra cut tissue, relieving the prostate.
In bladder instillation, the prescription medication dimethyl sulfoxide, or DMSO, (Rimso-50) is placed into your bladder through a thin, flexible tube (catheter) inserted through the urethra.
After that, the newly engineered urethra is ready to be implanted into the patient.
The challenge with traditional urethra replacement is creating a viable tube, one that will not easily collapse.
The first step for engineering a new urethra is to take a very small piece of the patient's own tissue (around half the size of a postage stamp) from the bladder area.
"Unfortunately for the narrow structures in the body (like urethras), they are kind of complex because they tend to collapse, " said Atala, who added that conventional urethra replacement fails more than half the time.
They had used a small piece of each patient's own tissue from the bladder, then grew the cells in a lab onto a mesh scaffold shaped like a urethra.
This was just the first in a near-comical procession of lurking horrors from anaconda that can digest an entire deer to the slivery candiru (parasitic toothpick fish) that can lodge, die and rot in your urethra, from puraques (eels) that can send 650 volts of electricity into their prey to bullet ants whose stings feel like being shot (all dangers we thankfully avoided).
"During the surgery, we go to the area that has been damaged, clean out scar tissue and plug in a new, engineered urethra, " said Atala.
应用推荐