Therapeutic Instruments used in Medical Science

1. Pacemaker

It supplies electrical impulses to heart to maintain heartbeat as regular rate. Clarence Walton Lillehei, an American physician built the first pacemaker in 1957. Lillehei's pacemaker was an electric unit that could be inserted in the patient's chest where it would give off an electrical jolt in order to regulate the pace of the heart beat. Pacemaker is a device which uses electrical impulses delivered by electrodes to maintain and regulate the beating of heart-so the primary function of pacemaker is to maintain adequate heart rate. When a condition called ‘heart block’ occurs, the electro conduction system of heart is interrupted and heart’s ability to pump blood is weakened. In such cases physicians normally use pacemakers to stimulate the heart. Pacemaker is an electrical generator that delivers the wanted pulse at an approximate time. Modern pacemakers are externally programmable and allow the cardiologist to select optimum pacing modes for individual patients.

2. Medical Lasers

Lasers are high energy particles of light amplified by stimulated emission of radiation. Lasers are now commonly used in many kind of surgical operations, opthalmology and Oncology.

3. Oxygenator (Heart Lung Machine)

The first heart-lung machine was invented in 1935 by John H.Gibbon, Jr (US) and his wife Mary Gibbon (US). They successfully shut off a cat's heart and lungs and then kept it alive with their machine. The first time they tried it on a human was in 1953. In 1953, the first open heart surgery was performed by using heart lung machine. A simpler more dependable machine was built in 1955 by American physicians Clarence Walton Lillehei and Richard A.DeWall. Their machine was a bubble-oxygenator that oxygenated the blood and removed the carbon dioxide.

4. Blood Dialyser (Artificial Kidney)

The apparatus is elaborate and bulky and it is used for sustaining kidney function when kidney fails. John Jacob Abel, an American biochemist, produced the first useful artificial kidney for laboratory work in 1912. Dutch-born Williem J.Kolff (US) began to work on building an artificial kidney that could be used on humans in 1938. Finally, in 1945, he designed a machine that worked to keep patients alive by filtering out blood urea, a process known as dialysis. Long-term dialysis became possible in 1960 when Belding Scribner (US) developed a Teflon and Silastic shunt that could be left in a patient's wrist over a period of years. This shunt served to connect the artificial kidney machine to the patient.

5. Angioplasty

It is used to open blocked coronory artery vessel through ballooning. It is a technique of opening arteries that have become blocked by deposits of cholesterol, calcium or any other substances. Angioplasty is especially important for patients whose coronary arteries have become critically narrowed. For many such patients this provides an alternative to surgery. In coronary angioplasty, a long tube (catheter) with a balloon attached to it is inserted into the blocked artery. After the long tube enters the narrowed part of the vessel, the balloon is inflated which crushes the deposits against the artery wall.

6. Angiography

An X-ray opaque dye is injected into arteries, and series of X-ray films are taken. Diagnosis of heart wall, valves, ventricles, coronary arteries etc. It is a technique that makes blood vessels visible using X-rays. The X-ray picture that is produced is called an angiogram. It is performed on arteries or veins connected with such structures as the brain, heart, kidneys or legs. Doctors use angiography to determine whether a narrowing of a blood vessel is being caused by a clot or by deposits of such substances as calcium and cholesterol.