Disadvantages Of Biomedical Engineering

One of the only medical professions that can lend you a hand, seriously, in a Biomedical Engineering career, I will be able to lend you a hand. There are several job opportunities in Biomedical Engineering, which tie together to provide needed care for patients. The typical job duties for biomedical engineers are to design products, such as artificial limbs for people who need them, artificial internal organs, and machines for diagnosing medical problems. They also install equipment, maintain, and repair the equipment as needed. (www.truity.com) These assets provided are the designing portion of this career. There is also research that has to be done, and that is where biomedical engineers work with different scientist, and chemists to research and understand the engineering details of the biological systems of the human body. A biomedical engineers job may also be spread between many professional fields.

Tissue engineering is an emerging interdisciplinary field that uses principles from engineering, biology and chemistry in an effort towards tissue regeneration. The main draw of tissue engineering is the regeneration of a patient’s own tissues and organs free from low biofunctionality and poor biocompatibility and serious immune rejection. As medical care continues to improve and life expectancy continues to grow, organ shortages become more problematic.(Manufacturing living things) According to organdonor.gov, a patient is added to the waiting list every 10 minutes and an average of 18 people die everyday waiting for an organ donation. The “nirvana” of tissue engineering is to replace the need for organ donation altogether. This could be achieved using scaffolding from

The field of bioprinting, using 3D printing technology for producing live cells with extreme accuracy, could be the answer to many of the problems we as humans face in the medical field. It could be the end to organ waiting lists and an alternative for organ transplants. In 3D printing technology lies the potential to replace the testing of new drugs on animals. However, the idea of applying 3 dimensional printing to the health industry is still quite new and yet to have a major impact. Manufacturing working 3D organs remains an enormous challenge, but in theory could solve major issues present today.

In a study conducted through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on “average 79 people will receive an organ each day; however, an average of 22 people die each day” waiting for transplants that cannot take place because of the shortage of donated organs (U.S. D.H.H.S). The average amount of patients waiting for an organ can reduce to zero with the continued development of 3-D printers. 3-D printing is a process of making three dimensional solid objects from a digital file. The digital file is uploaded onto a computer software, and then the 3-D printer prints the digital file out onto different materials. The materials include plastic, resin, nylon, sandstone. The finish products become replicas of the digital file, and what was an idea is now a reality. Therefore, 3-D printers will one day be the future of organ transplants because over the past twenty years the technology industry has rapidly grown into the focal point in society. From advancement in communication, to the medical field, science and technology has shaped this world today. Thus, the American Government should invest more money into the medical field budget because the research conducted on new technology (3-D Printers) leads to more lives saved, and expands the opportunity of future medical breakthroughs.

The medical industry had been achieving more in the stage of medical advancements, though they are still in the early phase. Artificial organs have been one of those achievements. Although they have achieved such, artificial organs are not perfect. Most doctors as well as patients would prefer to replace a dying organ with a compatible human organ, rather than with an artificial or animal organ. Yet due to a there being less organs donated than recipients, artificial and animal organs are becoming more common in transplants. Most of this issue is because people are unaware of how organ donation works, the organs that can be donated, how many people are in need, and the advancements that have happened in the field. Organ donation saves hundreds of lives every year, but many lives are recklessly lost due to a shortage of organ donors.

Doctors and engineers have been working on another way to get organs a faster and more efficient way. Using 3D printers can help with their problem. They have worked on using a 3D printer to make organs that are a perfect match for patients. This can be very useful it can get an organ ready in a short amount of time helping the patient recovery faster as well. Organ transplants are hard to come by. One you have to be put in a waiting list, and people are usually on that list for a long while, just waiting for a perfect match to come. But sometimes it takes to long and some people die while still on the waiting list. But when an organ finally does come they feel bad because someone had to die in order for them to use it. So Dr Ali Khademhosseini is trying to use 3D printing to help solve this problem. His theory is he can make organs from a 3D printer, which can make the waiting list decrease faster and have people not have to die in order for a perfect match. 3D printers have been used to make Human cells, tissue, and blood vessels. But making something like a heart is much more difficult. Because you have to make the beating and pumps. (Mesley). There have been problems in the past that have just know started to show in some people. "Viruses aren't the only worry, and here too the past may serve as a guide. In 1956 injections of human growth hormone became a standard therapy for children failing to develop properly. The hormone was extracted from

The purpose of this experiment is to test how scientists can most efficiently complete organ printing. In this lab, the cells will be suspended in a substrate called sodium alginate-collagen, hydrogel, and other reactants. These materials will react to then embed the cells to their goal location. Then, the cells will be able to be fixated into layers. These layers will then come together and form tissues, which according to biological organization will form organs. The inkjet bioprinter allows for this to occur. Tiny ink droplets form a digital design for the organ printing, and in horizontal sheets, the organ is created tissue by tissue. This lab will test to see which percent concentration of the sodium alginate-collagen composite will prove to be most effective when organ printing. The dependent factor that will determine the conclusion will be the percent of efficiency of cell survival rate. Four trials will be completed in which the same organ is printed and all factors are kept constant, except for the percent concentration of the substrate.

As technology advances and medical procedures and research expand, new treatments and new conflicts are created. A problem that has always plagued medical science is failing organs. As of today, organ failure is impossible to reverse and the only solution is replacement. There is a massive demand for healthy organs and with this demand comes the issue of bioethics.

Kaiba Gionfriddo was born prematurely in 2011. After 8 months, his lung development caused concerns, although he was sent home with his parents as his breathing was normal. Six weeks later, Kaiba stopped breathing and turned blue. He was diagnosed with tracheobronchomalacia, a long Latin word that means his that windpipe was so weak that it collapsed. He had a tracheostomy and was put on a ventilator – the conventional treatment. Still, Kaiba would stop breathing almost daily. His heart would stop, too. Then, his caregivers 3D printed a bioresorbable device that instantly helped Kaiba breathe. This case is considered a prime example of how customized 3D printing is transforming healthcare as

Imagine what our world would be like without x-rays, without heart monitors, and without advanced surgical tools; how would doctors diagnose, treat, or cure any patient?  How would we survive as a society if we did not have this medical technology readily available to us?  This is the reality of a world without Biomedical Engineering.  The Imperial College of London defines Biomedical Engineering as “a discipline that advances knowledge in engineering, biology and medicine, and improves human health through cross-disciplinary activities that integrate the engineering sciences with biomedical sciences and clinical practice” (Reyes-Guerra).  In today’s society, there are new advancements being made in technology every second, especially in the medical field.  What many people do not usually realize is that the research and products are being done and produced by biomedical engineers.  As this technology continues to progress, biomedical engineers have begun to change the way medical professionals approach a situation due to their research and production of artificial organs and limbs, however, these advancements lead people to question the necessity and ethics behind the topic.  The research being done by biomedical engineers is beginning to open up new doors in the medical field, giving doctors and patients more options of treatment, new ways of diagnosis, and possibilities of artificial organs and limbs.

In the future, the technology will be widely accepted since it can be used to create complete organ, to test newly developed drugs on manufactured cells instead of animals and human cell, to imprint cells directly onto a human body, thus reducing the wait time for organ transplantation, and save time and cost associated with drug research. An absolutely favorable position of customized organs is designing organs utilizing a patient 's own particular cells. With this methodology, there would be no issues with dismissal, and patients wouldn 't need to take the powerful anti-rejection medications that are presently required (Cooper-White, 2015). According to the Organovo company, the formation of a suitable liver is a crunch second for the bio-printing and drug industry since it demonstrates 3D printed tissue can be preserved successfully for a sufficient time to test the impacts of medications on it or insert it in a human body where it can further mature (Mearian,2013).

Aside from these state level approaches, 3D printing offers a promise for increasing available organs. This promise was validated in 2016, when a toddler from Northern Ireland became the “first to have a life-saving adult kidney transplant, using 3D printing.” While much work still needs to be done, printed organs, in addition to other proposed solutions, are alternatives to creating human-pig chimeras for organ transplantation.

There are multiple positive and negative effects to implementing an artificial organ into a human with health problems. According to Niharika Arya on Buzzle, “The time taken to create or grow an artificial organ is lesser than the waiting period for finding a suitable donor whose organ matches with the recipient’s body perfectly.” Over the years, organ donors have become less and less common, and the need for more organs have become prominent everywhere; but, with the help of artificial organs, people no longer have to feel obligated into donating their precious organs. Unfortunately, there are risks in everything and not everything is perfect. Therefore, artificial organs are no exception. The chances of organ failure are high, considering the fact that how the body reacts to a new organ is different amongst all people. If the artificial organ transplant did fail, the

Take a second, and imagine your life as a teenager, fresh out of college with, aspiring to get a degree in whatever your heart desires. You’ve got lots of ambition and potential. The world is at your fingertips; you can do anything you set your mind to. But one day, tragedy strikes and the unthinkable happens: you lose a limb. Why is not important, but what the future entails is. Let’s say this limb is your right arm, the one you have used all your life to write, eat, type and play the guitar. Now let’s change the scenario a little bit. Instead you’ve lost your legs in a horrific car accident where both were crushed under the weight of the dashboard as your car collided with the 4x4 in front of you. You wake up the next day in the hospital groggy, barely remembering what happened. Shock is the only thing running through your mind the moment you look down to see your legs missing. Your brain thinks they’re still there because yesterday you were just getting out of bed for your morning jog. All that remains are the stubs where your legs used to be and the unbearable thought of being confined to a motorized chair for the rest of your life.

As of November 30th, 2017, 116,080 people formed the organ transplant waiting list. On average, twenty people on this list will die today. The number of people that need an organ transplant continues to grow; every ten minutes a new name is added to the list. According to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, “only 3 in 1,000 people die in a way that allows for organ donation” (“Organ Donation Statistics”). In order for a deceased person to give organs, the organs must still be alive to donate. Organ transplantation improved greatly over the last century, but with an insufficient amount of organs available, it limits breakthroughs. In essence, new methods need to replace the unavailable organs. These methods drastically improve the process of organ transplantation, and in the future, the overall humans well-being.