Israel Active

No newborn with a heart defect like that of Cypriot baby Vassilios had ever survived. But Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center was willing to treat him.  After an anxious journey to Israel, Hadassah surgeons achieved the “impossible” and after 10 days Vassilios and his happy parents returned to Cyprus.

Palestinian Arab student Sara al Katzroy collapsed whilst jogging.  She was brought from Jericho hospital to Jerusalem where Hadassah doctors used a Molecular Adsorbent Recirculation System (MARS) to save her liver.  Sara now wants to become a nurse.

Two people have regained their eyesight after receiving the corneas of the late former Mossad chief Meir Dagan, who died March 17 after a long battle with cancer.  Avraham Gian, 81, and an unnamed 70-year-old woman received the corneas at Tel Aviv’s Sourasky (Ichilov) Hospital.

UK medical journal The Lancet reported the first implants of the interatrial shunts from Israel’s V-Wave .  In less than 1 hour, each of 10 Canadian patients suffering poor left ventricular function received new implants and were discharged home next morning.

Doctors at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem removed a tumor from the spine of a 3-year-old Palestinian Arab boy from Gaza to prevent him from becoming paralyzed.  The unique six-hour surgery involved stretching the boy’s spine and removing a vertebra. =

The US FDA has approved the DermaCompare melanoma (skin cancer) diagnosis system developed by Israel’s Emerald Medical (formally DermaCare).  The smartphone app enables tele-dermatology to detect possible melanomas and save lives.

Israel’s Professor Anat Lowenstein was selected in the top 100 most influential people in the world of ophthalmology by Ophthalmologist Magazine. It noted that “her contribution to, and influence in the field of medical and surgical retina cannot be underestimated.”

Israel’s Magdent has developed an electromagnetic-based technology that could speed up the process and improve bone quality in patients who are having trouble getting their implants in place.  After animal trials, a human study is now necessary.

A huge 25-year study of almost 100,000 women by researchers at Ben Gurion University and Soroka University Medical Center has concluded that fertility treatment has no cardiovascular risk to mothers.  4,153 women receiving fertility therapies were compared to 95,138 who conceived naturally.

Israel’s Sweetch has developed a clinical-outcome prediction platform, a behavioral analytics engine and risk meter, to stop diabetes before it starts.  Sweetch’s proprietary machine-learning algorithms detect pre-diabetes seven times more accurately than existing clinical evaluation.