Monitoring body recovery after serious injury is an important part of the jobs of medical professionals like doctors and therapists, yet it is at the same time a part of their field that needs much improvement. After all, these scientists can’t afford to take a lackadaisical approach when human lives are on the line.
Luckily for these professionals, scientists from the University of Arizona (UArizona) may have given the medical professionals of the future a new tool with which they can help save and improve lives; so-called osseosurface electronics are currently in development in the institution’s College of Engineering, with first results having been recently published in the journal Nature Communications.
These osseosurface electronics were developed by a UArizona team of researchers led by Dr. David Margolis, assistant professor of orthopedic surgery, and Philipp Gutruf, assistant professor of biomedical engineering.
“As a surgeon, I am most excited about using measurements collected with osseosurface electronics to someday provide my patients with individualized orthopedic care – with the goal of accelerating rehabilitation and maximizing function after traumatic injuries,” said Dr. Margolis.
The team did encounter some setbacks, though, including the problem of how to keep the device adhered onto the bone as it healed or grew. The UArizona team addressed this by designing a biocompatible adhesive loaded with calcium particles, and engineered to have an atomic structure similar to those of bone cells.
In essence, the adhesive “tricks” the bone into thinking that it is merely part of it, instead of being a foreign entity that must be removed from the bone. As a result, the bone “grows” into the thin device, designed to be roughly the thickness of a sheet of paper.
Said Gutruf in a statement: “Being able to monitor the health of the musculoskeletal system is super important. […] This technology platform allows us to create investigative tools for scientists to discover how the musculoskeletal system works and to use the information gathered to benefit recovery and therapy.”
Use of the device can give doctors insights into how a bone heals, or can give valuable information to patients suffering from musculoskeletal diseases like osteoporosis.
(Read up on other novel implant research with Modern Sciences, starting with brain implants that allow blind people to see flashes of light again and glucose sensors that need only be placed on your skin to do its job.)
References
- Cai, L., Burton, A., Gonzales, D. A., Kasper, K. A., Azami, A., Peralta, R., Johnson, M., Bakall, J. A., Barron Villalobos, E., Ross, E. C., Szivek, J. A., Margolis, D. S., & Gutruf, P. (2021). Osseosurface electronics—Thin, wireless, battery-free and multimodal musculoskeletal biointerfaces. Nature Communications, 12(1), 6707. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-27003-2
- University of Arizona College of Engineering. (2021, November 18). UArizona researchers develop ultra-thin ‘computer on the bone’. EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/935523
