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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday February 04 2018, @10:48AM   Printer-friendly
from the ears-to-you-kid dept.

Scientists have grown a perfectly compatible ear in a lab and grafted it onto a patient, in what they said was a world first in regenerative medicine.

The groundbreaking technique saw them use the patient's own ear cartilage cells to form a new one.

Five children suffering from a condition known as microtia, in which the external ear is underdeveloped, have undergone the experimental surgery.

The first child to have the procedure two-and-a-half years ago was showing no signs the body has rejected or accidentally absorbed the new cells, the Chinese team who developed the procedure wrote when they published their findings in the journal EBioMedicine.

Currently the widely used treatments for microtia include the use of silicone prosthetic ears, or rib-cartilage reconstruction, which has mixed results.

The new technique involves taking a scan of the child's unaffected ear, reversing the dimensions and 3D-printing a biodegradable mould punctuated with tiny holes.

Cartilage cells taken from the recipient's other, unaffected ear are then used to fill the holes while the new ear is still in the lab.

Over three months the cartilage cells begin to grow in the shape of the mould, and the mould itself begins to break down.

While this process is underway, the ear is grafted onto the recipient.

"It's a very exciting approach," Tessa Hadlock, a reconstructive plastic surgeon at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in Boston, told New Scientist, which first reported on the research.

Guangdong Zhou, et. al. In Vitro Regeneration of Patient-specific Ear-shaped Cartilage and Its First Clinical Application for Auricular Reconstruction, EBioMedicine, DOI: 10.1016/j.ebiom.2018.01.011


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Sunday February 04 2018, @05:57PM (6 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday February 04 2018, @05:57PM (#632961) Journal

    Idk, but a major improvement would be to find a way to regenerate inner ear hair cells, which could reverse damage caused by loud noises as well as bring your hearing back to the range you had in infancy. Unfortunately, you could become susceptible to The Mosquito [wikipedia.org].

    https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-03-20/new-treatment-could-combat-hearing-loss-regenerating-hair-cells-inner-ear [pri.org]

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Sunday February 04 2018, @06:10PM (5 children)

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Sunday February 04 2018, @06:10PM (#632966)

    Some of us can still hear that, even into middle age.

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday February 04 2018, @06:17PM

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday February 04 2018, @06:17PM (#632969) Journal

      https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/statistics/age-which-hearing-loss-begins [nih.gov]

      I wanted to find a chart/table that lists frequency ranges for every 1-3 years, but I couldn't find that and saw this instead.

      8-16% don't experience "hearing loss" until age 70+!

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    • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday February 04 2018, @07:03PM (3 children)

      by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Sunday February 04 2018, @07:03PM (#632990) Journal

      But how well? I can still hear, but there are signs that the ability is decreasing. My neighbor in his 90's had to give up playing the piano, because he couldn't even hear the rhythm anymore. (OTOH, a few decades ago a professional piano player lived just down the hill, and she was stone deaf, but still played the piano well, because it was so ingrained in her patterns. She also just pretended to read the music, so that those accompanying her could play along. This was shown one time when she accidentally turned two pages at once and didn't notice.)

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      • (Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Sunday February 04 2018, @08:40PM

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Sunday February 04 2018, @08:40PM (#633016)

        But how well?

        Well, I can still hear the Mosquito tone on the Wikipedia page. I can only barely hear it, but I don't know that I could hear it much better in my 20s. I can still hear NTSC TVs now, for the very rare occasion I see one, just like I could hear them back then. Usually, with hearing loss, the high frequencies go first, so I guess I'm OK.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 05 2018, @01:07AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 05 2018, @01:07AM (#633086)

        Dame Evelyn Glennie [wikipedia.org] is a Scottish virtuoso percussionist. She has been profoundly deaf since the age of 12 and claims to have taught herself to hear with parts of her body other than her ears.

        -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 05 2018, @06:31AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 05 2018, @06:31AM (#633162)

          As sound is but vibration it's a perfectly credible claim. The brain expects and requires sensor input.

          Like some blind people have learned to probe their surrounding with noise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation [wikipedia.org]