Israel Active

When an Israeli woman discovered that she and her daughter were suffering from a dangerous genetic heart condition, Sheba Medical Center found innovative ways to save their lives.

Jerusalem’s Herzog Medical Center has closed the hospital’s coronavirus ward, the last one operating in the country. The ward’s closure means that future COVID-19 patients will be treated in regular hospital wards. Herzog’s coronavirus ward opened in August 2020, and treated 2,000 patients.

A study used the cryoablation system from Israel’s IceCure Medical (see previously) to treat 42 women with the chronic, painful, incurable disease endometriosis. 93.75% had no pain after six months, and 82.72% remained pain-free up to three years later.

For the first time in Israel, plastic surgeons and oncologists at Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center used electrochemotherapy to treat skin cancer tumors. An electric current disrupts the cellular membrane of the tumor cells, allowing chemotherapy to enter.

Researchers at Tel Aviv University have developed nanoparticles containing RNA that silences the protein CKAP5 – essential to the stability of many types of cancer. The therapy causes the cancer cells to collapse and is 80% effective in lab tests targeting ovarian cancer.

It took an Israeli - Dr Abraham Yaari - to invent the Yaari Extractor™- a simple device that solves shoulder dystocia – an emergency where a baby’s shoulders are preventing safe delivery. The device allows the obstetrician or gynecologist to turn the baby 45 degrees, thus preventing its suffocation.

I highly recommend watching this inspiring video of some of the pioneering medical science and researchers at Israel’s Ben Gurion University. It describes BGU’s groundbreaking discoveries and innovations in 3D printed science, cancer research, biomedical engineering, and so much more.

When Dr. Ariel Lipschuetz fractured his back skiing in France, he called Dr Schroeder, Director of Hadassah’s back unit. Amazingly, he was skiing only 26km away and arranged for robotic percutaneous fixation surgery at Hadassah. It saved Dr Lipschuetz from almost certain paralysis.

For the second newsletter in a row, another Israeli doctor saved an airline passenger. This time it was a teenager who suffered a severe anaphylactic attack. United Hatzalah volunteer Dr. Natan Ungar used adrenaline to treat the patient, and the El Al plane continued from Tel Aviv to New York.

Benny, a United Hatzalah volunteer EMT, treated two victims of a terrorist stabbing.  Before that, however, he helped immobilize the terrorist.  A real life Israeli super-hero.