Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
distinction of a Nobel Prize. Most of these efforts were made possible by the technology that
was available to these clinical scientists.
The employment of the available technology assisted in advancing the development of
complex surgical procedures. The Drinker respirator was introduced in 1927, and the first
heart-lung bypass was performed in 1939. In the 1940s, cardiac catheterization and angi-
ography (the use of a cannula threaded through an arm vein and into the heart with the
injection of radiopaque dye for the x-ray visualization of lung and heart vessels and valves)
were developed. Accurate diagnoses of congenital and acquired heart disease (mainly valve
disorders due to rheumatic fever) also became possible, and a new era of cardiac and
vascular surgery began. The development and implementation of robotic surgery in the
first decade of the twenty-first century have even further advanced the capabilities of
modern surgeons. Neurosurgery, both peripheral and central, and vascular surgery have
seen significant improvements and capabilities with this new technology (Figure 1.4).
Another child of this modern technology, the electron microscope, entered the medical
scene in the 1950s and provided significant advances in visualizing relatively small cells.
Body scanners using early PET (positron-emission tomography) technology to detect tumors
arose from the same science that brought societies reluctantly into the atomic age. These
“tumor detectives” used radioactive material and became commonplace in newly established
departments of nuclear medicine in all hospitals.
FIGURE 1.4 Changes in the operating room: (a) the surgical scene at the turn of the century, (b) the surgical
scene in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and (c) the surgical scene today
Technology for Patient
From J. D. Bronzino,
Care,
St. Louis: Mosby, 1977;
The Biomedical Engineering Handbook
, CRC Press, 1995; 2000; 2005.
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