Cleveland Clinic is ranked number one for both Cardiology and Heart Surgery and in the top three for many other specialties. Each year they highlight the top ten scientific advances in medicine. Here are just three of those important scientific discoveries.
THE SEIZURE STOPPER
For the 840,000 epileptics suffering from sudden, uncontrollable seizures, the NeuroPace is like “a defibrillator for your brain,” Dr. Roizen of Cleveland Clinic says.
The system includes sensors implanted in the brain that can spot the first tremors of an oncoming seizure. Then it sends electrical pulses that counteract the brain’s own haywire signals, stopping the seizure in its tracks.
Even more impressive: The NeuroPace can be fine-tuned by doctors based on its performance. In the first year it was available, seizure episodes were reduced by an average of 40 percent—but 2 years later, they dropped by 53 percent.
THE HEPATITIS CURE
Until recently, treatment for hepatitis C fell into the good-but-not-great category, with only around 70 percent of patients being cured.
And that was after as much as 48 weeks of a strict anti-viral drug regimen, including injections of interferon—which causes a number of debilitating side effects.
But the new drug Sofosbuvir is a much more potent killer of Hep C, with success in as many as 95 percent of patients. Even more, the medication only has to be administered for 12 weeks, sans interferon injections.
THE HEART-SAVING HORMONE
Around 1 in 4 people who are hospitalized for heart failure don’t last much longer than a year.
But a new drug called Serelaxin has upped the odds of survival by as much as 37 percent, according to a University of California, San Francisco study. It’s a synthetic version of the hormone relaxin, which is produced by pregnant women to help with the increased stress carrying a fetus places on the heart.
“It not only opens up your blood vessels to supply your organs oxygen, but it has anti-inflammatory properties,” Dr. Roizen says. Serelaxin’s life-saving potential is profound enough that in June, the FDA dubbed it a “breakthrough therapy,” putting it on a faster track for approval in hospitals.