The Drs: Growing Body Parts with Stem Cells & Preventing Eye Injuries

The Doctors: Growing Human Body Parts With Stem Cells

The future of medicine is looking very bright. A university in London has been using stem cells to grow replacement body parts, leading many people to speculate that in the future, most of your body parts will be grown in a lab.

But is it safe? Many critics of using stem cells to grow body parts are wondering if there could be risks associated with transplanting a lab-made organ into a person’s body.

With 18 people dying every single day because they did not get an organ transplant in time, the real questions is do the dangers outweigh the dangers we face now?

Lab-Made Trachea Implanted Into a Human

The Doctors said a lab-made trachea, which was grown with stem cells, was recently implanted into a human but it isn’t the first time stem cells have been used like this. Dr. Andrew Ordon said when he had surgery on his knee, doctors took 40 cc’s of cells from his bone marrow, separated the cells and then put the stem cells back into his joints to make them work better.

While many of the organs being grown in labs are hollow structures, The Doctors said the time is coming when doctors will be able to place stem cells into a heart mill and grow a heart.

Eyewitness Loses Eye, Causes Mistrial

While an eyewitness was on the stand in a criminal trial against a man who beat him up in a bar fight, the prosthetic eye the man was wearing, the one he had to get after the brutal fight, fell out in the middle of the court proceedings, causing the judge to declare a mistrial.

How To Protect Your Eye After Injury

While only one percent of the population needs a prosthetic eye, The Doctors said it can be a tragic event to lose an eye. To help people learn how to prevent eye injuries or at least when to get them treated, they offered the following advice:

• If there is blood in the white part of the eye, that means there is a buildup of blood behind the eye. Dr. Ordon said any visual changes to the eye are very serious.
• If there is pain behind the eye, it could also mean blood buildup. If it only hurts to move the eye, that means the muscles around the eye have been damaged.
• Any sort of vision change after an accident needs to be looked at right away by a specialist.

Dr. Travis Stork said it is not uncommon to rupture the eyeball but it is imperative to see a doctor if it happens. He has seen injuries so bad the swelling of the eyelid covers the eye so the person can not even see the damage. So, if your eye is so swollen you can’t see it, then you need to go to the hospital right away.