Breakthrough Kidney Stone Procedure Makes It Possible For Astronauts To Travel To Mars (komonews.com) 70
An anonymous reader quotes a report from KOMO News: A groundbreaking medical procedure for those with kidney stones will soon be offered at the University of Washington after more than two decades of research. It will also give astronauts the go ahead they need from NASA to travel to Mars. It's a groundbreaking procedure to get rid of painful stones while you're awake, no anesthesia needed. "This has the potential to be game changing," said Dr. Kennedy Hall with UW Medicine. Still being run through clinical trials at UW Medicine, the procedure called burst wave lithotripsy uses an ultrasound wand and soundwaves to break apart the kidney stone. Ultrasonic propulsion is then used to move the stone fragments out, potentially giving patients relief in 10 minutes or less.
This technology is also making it possible for astronauts to travel to Mars, since astronauts are at a greater risk for developing kidney stones during space travel. It's so important to NASA, the space agency has been funding the research for the last 10 years. "They could potentially use this technology while there, to help break a stone or push it to where they could help stay on their mission and not have to come back to land," said Harper. The research has been published in the Journal of Urology.
This technology is also making it possible for astronauts to travel to Mars, since astronauts are at a greater risk for developing kidney stones during space travel. It's so important to NASA, the space agency has been funding the research for the last 10 years. "They could potentially use this technology while there, to help break a stone or push it to where they could help stay on their mission and not have to come back to land," said Harper. The research has been published in the Journal of Urology.
Great headline (Score:2)
If this breakthrough makes it possible to to go to Mars - how does it address the much bigger problem with radiation exposure during the trip?
(Yeah yeah I know... they'll just travel at night)
Ever passed a kidney stone? (Score:3)
Holy cow you'd know it if you diid. It's like I imagine getting hit by lightning feels
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This has nothing to do with radiation exposure, it helps fix a different problem. As far as I know the only reliable solution so far for radiation exposure is shielding with mass, and they've had those calculations since the '70s. It wasn't seen as an insurmountable problem given sufficient funding and research, but of course funding had to be diverted to the Pentagon. Had funding continued at the 4.5% of the Federal budget NASA had at the peak of Apollo they reasonably expected to be opening the first p
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"This has nothing to do with radiation exposure, it helps fix a different problem"
Wow, no fooling you is there. I suspect he was being ironic. There are a number of big health issues wrt to spending a long time in space and Mars and kidney stones isn't one of them. Radiation exposure is probably the biggest along with > year in zero G there and ditto back, the extremely nasty martian soil dust which is so fine there's almost no way to keep it out of the spacecraft and is not only corrosive but could caus
Re:Great headline (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually yes, kidney stones *is* one of the issues, since they're so completely debilitating and apparently fairly common among long term (> 3 month) space travelers. A family friend was in the emergency room with a kidney stone and another patient looked at him doubled over in pain and said, "Kidney stone? I've had five kids and one kidney stone, and I'd prefer to birth five more right in a row than have another kidney stone." That's how debilitating they are, it means the astronaut is pretty much out of action until it passes, which is not a good situation to have if something critical needs their attention.
As to why? "Because we can" is a perfectly acceptable answer to a lot of people, I'd go in an instant even if it were a one-way trip. I rather disagree about the wisdom of hauling myself out of one gravity well only to drop into another, I find colonization of space to be more interesting than colonization of planets, but if it's not me paying the bill I wouldn't complain much. My ancestors left an established life in Cornwall to spend weeks on a miserable leaking ship and then cut down trees in the frontier of Connecticut, braving bears, Frenchmen, Indians, starvation and freezing, I'm sure people back home asked themselves why they thought that was an appropriate place for humans to live as well.
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"I'd go in an instant even if it were a one-way trip."
Yeah, of course you would pal. Its easy to play the tough guy adventurer card when you know there's zero chance of ever being called up.
"why they thought that was an appropriate place for humans to live as well."
Probably because it had a breathable atmosphere, water, food , building material and land they could farm. Other than that, who can guess eh?
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Probably because it had a breathable atmosphere, water, food , building material and land they could farm. Other than that, who can guess eh?
Funny how you just ignored the sentence right before that: "braving bears, Frenchmen, Indians, starvation and freezing.". Those were the challenging conditions that existed in Connecticut at the time that Cornwall did not have that the poster was talking about. The freezing condition still exists in Connecticut by the way.
Re: Great headline (Score:2)
Starvation and being throw off or even murdered for their land was one of the main drivers of emigration from the UK and ireland so what had they to lose? Go learn some history. And the worst environmental conditions on earth are a paradise compared to mars.
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Starvation and being throw off or even murdered for their land was one of the main drivers of emigration from the UK and ireland so what had they to lose?
I don't know about you but DEATH is somewhat permanent. Unless you live in a world where resurrection is common.
Go learn some history.
BAHAHAHAHAA. You do know that from history we know what happened but people living at that time do not have the benefit of hindsight. Or a time machine. You viewpoint seems rather ignorant of that.
And the worst environmental conditions on earth are a paradise compared to mars.
Again DEATH is pretty much a worse condition than environmental ones. At least most people would prefer environmental ones on Earth over death.
Re: Great headline (Score:2)
What an appropriate name you have.
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I come from a long line of pacifists, as far as I can tell back to the 1860s, so yes, they are.
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Well, if you want to parade your ignorance go for it, wave that flag high! If Russia wanted to commit genocide there would be more than 10,000 dead civilians in the conflict, but so far they've killed fewer noncombatants than the US did just in Fallujah. This is the first war in at least a century, and probably much longer, where the civilians killed to combatants killed is less than 1/10, the opposite ratio is far more normal. Something of a tribute to the targeting abilities of modern weaponry, I suppo
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WTF are you babbling about? I really have no clue. You might want to check your meds, you may have missed some with breakfast.
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Just a quibble, but the US doesn't do any actual "defense" spending, we have no enemies capable of attacking us in any meaningful way. It was a mistake to allow the Department of War to rename itself after WWII.
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But who is going to defend the Russians and the Muslims and the Chinese from us?
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If this breakthrough makes it possible to to go to Mars - how does it address the much bigger problem with radiation exposure during the trip?
I assume because NASA already has plans for radiation exposure but this was a technical problem that until this point had no solution. Forgive me but I assume radiation exposure is not exactly a brand new problem for NASA.
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Bro here wants all environmentalists to be silent when a developed country like the UK have been turning the sea around them to liquid shit because living in a feces fountain is just the sort of whining to be mocked with hacksawing on the capslock key.
Bro if you had to complain about space naysayers you're ignoring the divide between the US, Russia, China and India because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the back and forth savagery in Israel and Palestine burning international trust. The environmenta
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Kidney stones hurt like a motherfucker (Score:4, Informative)
But they didn't kill you. They just make you wish you were dead. Pain pills, muscle relaxers, a lot of water and a few hours is all most stones need.
Even the worst one I had which hurt so badly I went pale and was close to passing out from the pain wouldn't stop me from space travel.
However, that being said, if this works and becomes generally available, I'll be the first civilian to sign up for treatment. I've had them 4 times and scans say I still have 3 more. Thumbs up for medical advances.
Re:Kidney stones hurt like a motherfucker (Score:4, Interesting)
They invented this 30 years ago.
Re:Kidney stones hurt like a motherfucker (Score:5, Informative)
Current ultra sonics cant be used for many/most stones. Larger stones still require either a doctor going in or the painful wait.
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They can do that on a space ship?
And that "treatment" you got was some primitive ass shit which still required a stent.
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If your stones are of the calcium variety, ask your physician about taking a small amount of sodium carbonate (washing soda) or lemon juice (citrate) every day. It prevents their formation and keeps things soluble.
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Certainly kidney stones, left untreated, can kill you.
Star Trek TOS Comes To Life? (Score:2)
Gall stones? (Score:3)
I wonder if this could be applied, with modifications of course, to gall stones
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They can, see this Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithotripsy
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My mother used Google to find that Aloe Vera was good for kidney stones, She was going to go to the local pharmacy to get some, but a family friend overheard her and said "don't waste your time with that - go to the West Indian shop and get a leaf and prepare it yourself". She bought the leaf instead and then asked the friend how t
In the colonies (Score:3)
This reminds me of something I read as a kid, the kind of thing they wouldn't let kids read for a couple reasons these days. First, it described primitive surgery. Secondly, it was written from a white perspective that portrayed natives as superstitious and backwards. So anyway, the story was that a doctor diagnosed a severe stone in a native woman, and performed surgery to remove it, most likely with "grin and bear it" or perhaps alcohol, but I don't recall. The doctor told them it was a "demon", which he crushed after removing. I honestly don't remember if the woman lived in the story; but I think she did and it was something that helped the relationship between the colonials and the tribe--for a time.
So anyway, as risky as space travel is, as bad as it is to have a problem like that, at least you'll get proper anesthetics and sterile procedure. They didn't even know about germs in colonial times. Absolutely mind blowing what people went through.
Colonial times? (Score:2)
Pasteur developed the disease theory of bacteria and discovered the need for sterilisation back in the 19th century. The colonial era ended in the 1960s, assuming you don't recognise China's colonisation of Tibet and the Uighur lands as colonisation, nor the settlement of large numbers of Russians in the Baltic republics until they escaped the Soviet Union.
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Why would you do this?
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In the USA, the phrase "colonial era" or "colonial times" is generally understood as the period where British colonies existed on the east coast, up until the time of the Revolutionary War. Since this is a US-centric web site and says so in the FAQ, I didn't feel like I had to explain that.
Fair comment (Score:2)
I must remember that I must conform to the usages of the language of the Empire when posting on /. :)
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Pray that I do not alter the bargain any further. Seriously though, perhaps my bad--because I went back to check the FAQ and it's not there any more. IIRC, back in the day we used to hear a lot of complaints about that and it was allegedly in the FAQ but now I'm wondering if it ever was and if that was just something people said and never verified.
Wayback machine might help; but I'm lazy and also the power goes off soon for some kind of planned maintenance.
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Hmmm, who should I trust about space exploration - NASA, or an angry guy on Slashdot who wrote several paragraphs where he repeatedly claimed the iPhone came out in 1997 and Android came out a decade later, in 2007?
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"Gallstones -- no solution for that one."
Huh? Some gallstones respond to ultrasonics too.
This has nothing to do with Mars (Score:5, Informative)
They invented shock wave lithotripsy 30 years ago which broke up kidney stones and left the small pieces to be excreted naturally over a period of a few days.
Burst wave lithotripsy is a recent refinement of that which appears to be more effective and can be used to move the fragments out immediately.
This is a promising advancement which, if it works out, will help people on Earth with kidney stones have faster recovery and fewer complications.
That said, it has fuck all to do with making it possible for astronauts to go to Mars. The author should be ashamed for creating that clickbait article.
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Did they get a NASA grant to study this?
The clown world of government contracting is something "special".
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Let's review your objection: To solve a particular problem that affects astronauts that it is a current unsolved problem for long term space travel, you object that NASA would fund research to solve that problem. Is that your objection? Next thing I suppose you'll object to the US military funding research on better battlefield armor to keep soldiers alive.
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For example Einstein won 1921 Nobel prize for many things
Hyperbole Rocket (Score:2)
Itâ(TM)s not enough to report on a meaningful science advance, you also have to mention:
Going to Mars
Climate Change
Electric Vehicles
Flying Cars
Artificial Intelligence
Cryptocurrency
CRISPR
Some American Politician
California
A Lawsuit
Bad China
Bad Google
Bad Microsoft
Bad Russia
Good Apple
and also throw in something about people killing each other.
What were we talking about, again?
I bet the procedure hurts like a bastard. (Score:2)
That being said, I think I'd take it.
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I've had kidney stones twice (Score:1)