Cleveland Clinic reports bionic arm breakthrough

[Photo courtesy of Cleveland Clinic]

Cleveland Clinic researchers say they’ve developed a bionic system that takes a big step toward restoring natural arm function for patients with upper limb amputations.

Upper-limb amputees often have to constantly watch their prosthetics while using them to make corrections in how much grasping force they use, but Cleveland Clinic said patients testing the new bionic arm system used it with less effort and an easier learning curve.

“Perhaps what we were most excited to learn was that they made judgments, decisions and calculated and corrected for their mistakes like a person without an amputation,” lead investigator Paul Marasco said in a news release. “With the new bionic limb, people behaved like they had a natural hand. Normally, these brain behaviors are very different between people with and without upper limb prosthetics.”

The bionic system combines a neu…

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Medtronic implant found better at predicting AFib than external device

(Image courtesy of University of Alberta)

A Medtronic implant was three times better than an external monitor at detecting new atrial fibrillation in stroke patients, a new study says.

The Post-Embolic Rhythm Detection With Implantable Versus External Monitoring (PER DIEM) study pitted Medtronic’s Reveal Linq implantable device, which monitors for AFib over 12 months, against the Spiderflash-T external device made by Sorin Group, which works over a 30-day period.

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