Wirelessly Powered Medical Implant Propels Itself Through the Bloodstream 37
cylonlover writes "With the wait still on for a miniaturization ray to allow some Fantastic Voyage-style medical procedures by doctors in submarines, tiny electronic implants capable of traveling in the bloodstream show much more promise. While the miniaturization of electronic and mechanical components now makes such devices feasible, the lack of a comparable reduction in battery size has held things back. Now engineers at Stanford University have demonstrated a tiny, self-propelled medical device that would be wirelessly powered from outside the body, enabling devices small enough to move through the bloodstream."
Cool but ... ? (Score:4, Informative)
What's that word I'm looking for? Ah, yes, embolism. That's what it's called if it get's stuck in too small artery.
Re:What do you call... (Score:3, Informative)
A stroke generally involves a macroscopic embolus getting stuck in an artery in the brain. As-in a pathologist can often physically find it during an autopsy (I once heard of one that showed how one fit together with a thrombus in the leg much like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle). The scale of the BBB and a thrombus is completely different.
IOW, a stroke involves blocking an artery, which happens long before it reaches the capillaries and BBB. You can contrast this with a pulmonary embolus which is usually a shower of small clots blocking smaller blood vessels in the lungs (although you can get things like a saddle embolus where a large clot blocks both pulmonary arteries... it's very bad).