Angelite Nurses

Babies Will Receive Physical Exams

SAN FRANCISCO -- Kaiser Permanente has begun tuberculosis testing for patients, employees and visitors who may have been exposed to a San Francisco maternity ward worker diagnosed with the infectious disease.

Kaiser said the part-time employee worked the night shift in the postpartum unit of its San Francisco Medical Center from March 10 to August 10 and no longer works there.

The medical center on Tuesday began notifying people who may have been exposed, including  

about 960 mothers and their infants. 


Patients will be screened with a simple skin test, but infants also will undergo a physical exam and chest X-ray. Some babies will be treated with antibiotics as a precaution.

Kaiser officials said the infection risk is low, and the worker had a common strain of TB that responds well to treatment.

A painless "microneedle" that mimics the way a female mosquito sucks blood has been built by engineers in India and Japan. The needle could be used to draw blood, inject drugs, and as a glucose-level monitor for diabetics.

A female mosquito sucks blood by flexing and relaxing certain muscles in its proboscis. This creates suction (or negative pressure) that draws blood into its mouthparts.

The new biocompatible microneedle, designed by Suman Chakraborty of the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur and Kazuyoshi Tsuchiya of Tokai University in Kanagawa is based on the same principle.

In this case, the sucking action is provided by a microelectromechanical pump, which works using a piezoelectric actuator attached to the needle.

Contrary to popular belief, a mosquito bite does not hurt. It is the anticoagulant saliva that the creature injects to stop your blood clotting that causes inflammation and pain.
Snap safe

The new needle has an inner diameter of around 25 microns and an external diameter of 60 microns, which is about the same size as a mosquito's mouthpart. Its size and the fact that it works by suction, makes it painless. To compare, a conventional syringe needle has an outer diameter of around 900 microns.

In contrast to previous microneedles, which were made of silicon dioxide, the new device is robust because it is made of stronger titanium and related alloys, which dramatically reduces the risk of it snapping during injections.

The needle is also strong enough to penetrate as far as 3 millimetres into skin and reach capillary blood vessels.

Its size compared to earlier models also means that surface tension effects are exploited further, and the same capillary flow that draws water up into trees helps draw blood into the microneedle.

The researchers have calculated that their needle can extract 5 microlitres of blood per second. This volume is sufficient for measuring blood-sugar levels in diabetics using a glucose sensor that can be attached to the needle in a "wristwatch" design.
Production challenges

The design uses a shape-memory alloy to drive the needle into skin and a micro-pump for delivering drugs. The latter could be used to inject insulin (or other drugs) into the patient when required.

"The working principle of this device follows on from our discovery that in a well-designed microneedle, surface tension forces may overcome resistance from friction and draw up blood with unprecedented efficiency," Chakraborty told New Scientist.

Chakraborty and Tsuchiya hope to commercialise their needle, but there are still some challenges to overcome, including cost, scaling up the fabrication method, and making it more user-friendly.

"This new blood extraction is interesting, but I question its ability to be fabricated and initialised en masse," said Geoffrey Thomas of the University of Calgary, Canada, who is working on a similar blood glucose sampling and analysis project.

Journal reference: Journal of Applied Physics (DOI: 10.1063/1.2936856)

August 28, 2008 - 10:15am


Click to enlarge graphic. (Graphic courtesy of the Maryland Hospital Association) 
Hank Silverberg, WTOP Radio

WASHINGTON - Wanted: Nurses, physicians assistants, pharmacists and lab technicians. 

In Maryland, the nursing shortage has reached almost 10 percent, 2,603 full-time nurses. 

The vacancy rate for speech therapists is more than 20 percent, according to a new report from the Maryland Hospital Association. It's nearly 20 percent for respiratory therapists. The rate is more than 15 percent for occupational therapists and physician assistants. 

The findings are in a study of 41 hospital positions. 

Maryland Hospital Association President and Chief Executive Officer Carmela Coyle says the problem is expected to get worse. 

"We don't have enough nurses in the pipeline today to fill those retiring nurse positions," she says. 

The association predicts a shortage of 10,000 nurses in less than a decade. 

The vacancy rate in Virginia is running less than the national average of 8 percent because of economic growth, but that could be short term. 

(Copyright 2008 by WTOP. All Rights Reserved.)