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Nurse Lisa Speney, R.N., routinely pokes and prods patients who need chemotherapy or other drugs, but she'd welcome anything that would help her find the right spot. Her ideal? "A nice big X-ray machine that you can put over someone's arm so you know exactly where to go," she says.



If you're sick, chances are you're going to have a procedure that you'll probably find uncomfortable. Two of the most common are catheters in the skin to deliver drugs and a tube down the throat to see what's going on.



Now, a new device called the Sonic Flashlight can help. It allows doctors to see inside a patient's skin and locate their target vein.



"You look through the mirror at the patient, and you can see a reflective display floating inside the patient," George Stetten, M.D., a biomedical engineer at Carnegie Mellon/University of Pittsburgh, tells Ivanhoe.



The Sonic Flashlight is mounted on the outside of an ultrasound wand. The mirror creates a virtual image of the patient's vein and can reflect images within the body that are up to six inches from the surface of the skin. It's been used on 15 living patients so far as part of a clinical trial. It can also be used to direct needles during biopsies.



Another tool, called the microdebrider, can be used to remove tumors or other airway blockages in the throat. Pulmonologist William Lunn, M.D., says it's safer than the standard cutting tools.



"It's smaller, more precise, and allows doctors to have a better view when they are doing airway endoscopes surgery," Dr. Lunn, of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, tells Ivanhoe.



The microdebrider has a spinning blade that cuts tissue and sucks it out. The device can be used to remove just about any blockage in the throat and can be used for orthopedics, bone and joint work and by plastic surgeons to do liposuction.



It gave Michael Jones his voice back after cartilage in his airways made it hard to breathe.



Michael's mother, Henrietta Jones, says, "He didn't talk much because he says he sounded like a robot and didn't want the children to laugh at him." Now, he's feeling much better.



Michael says, "Keep your head up and don't give up hope." And with new tools like these, many patients won't have to give up.



This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com, who offers Medical Alerts by e-mail every day of the week.



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