INCONTINENCE
TALK about the things that people take for granted!
Your sphincter?
If something goes wrong with your urinary sphincter or your anal sphincter you can become incontinent.
Seriously,
Most people with incontinence cope.
Not so easy though.
I’m not saying their lives are over. Not at all. There are treatments – exercises, nerve stimulators, drugs, surgery. Even diapers. But wouldn’t it be nice if you could just call up and say “How about a new one?”
Dr. Kalil Bentar (Institute For Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center) is developing artificial sphincters – anal AND (you’ll be thrilled to know) urinary – that could replace the real thing. They’re grown in the lab with real muscle cells and real nerve cells. Drop in place replacements.
It’s no Heathkit. Surgeons are still needed for the “install”. Still. This is a big advance.
ScienceAintSoBadRating? In spite of the yuck factor, I would like to give this one a 10 because it’s SO cool and offers a great quality of life for millions of people.
But I can’t.
Not yet.
There‘s still a lot to be done before this is fully refined, tested, and available.
ScienceAintSoBadRating = 6 for now.
More to come.
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Credit to Joriel “Joz” Jimenez for the above photo.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.