Realistic Face Masks

With halloween coming up and more face transplants occurring to address severe facial disfigurement, it was only a matter of time when a commercial company can recreate a 3-dimensional replica of a person's face. Unlike medical facial transplants which creates a face that's a cross between the donor face and the patient's face prior to disfigurement, these faces are perfect replicas down to scars, blood vessels, skin pores, etc.

Well, there's a Japanese company called Real-f 3 Dimension Photo Forms that can produce a realistic mask of yours or anybody else's face.

But... they are expensive running $4000 - $6000.

Check out more realistic face masks the company has created on their facebook page.

Beating Heart in a Box

With heart and lung transplants, the current standard is to transport the heart (or any other organ to be transplanted) inside an icebox cooler on ice. It's the same kind of icebox cooler you would use to take on a picnic. Think about it... You can buy a human organ transportation container off of Amazon.com for $39. In fact, I would not be surprised if some medical centers purchased such icebox coolers from Amazon.com.

Well, a company called TransMedics is aiming to elevate organ transportation technology from the icebox cooler to a cyborg-like container where the heart is warm, alive, and still-beating from donor to recipient. Same goes for the lung. Others soon to follow!

Check out these videos!

Woman Undergoes Successful Voicebox Transplant

USA Today published a story on January 20, 2011 about a courageous woman who underwent a voicebox transplant October 2010. The surgery took over 2 days and was led by a team of doctors at the University of California, Davis Medical Center and included experts from England and Sweden.

The first voicebox transplant took place at Cleveland Clinic in 1998 on Timothy Heidler after a motorcycle accident and who now talks completely normally.

Read more of the story here.

Reference:
Laryngeal transplantation and 40-month follow-up. N Engl J Med. 2001 May 31;344(22):1676-9.

Transplantation of the larynx--a case report that speaks for itself. N Engl J Med. 2001 May 31;344(22):1712-4.