'Virtual massage' could help phantom limb pain

'Virtual massage' could help phantom limb pain

By Nic Fleming, Science Correspondent
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 20/03/2008
Amputees who experience strange phantom limb pains could gain relief through "virtual massage", scientists say.
Amputees get virtual treatment for 'phantom limbs'
More than half of people who have had limbs amputated report sensations that feel as if their missing limbs are still attached, and most say these are painful.
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Researchers found combat veteran amputees who watched other people rubbing their limbs gained relief from such pain.

Surgeon learns medical advances can be products of war

Surgeon learns medical advances can be products of war

Posted by Chronicle News Service March 18, 2008 09:23AM
Categories: Grand Rapids
Chronicle News Service/Lori Niedenfuer Cool

Orthopedic surgeon Dr. Clifford Jones takes a break between surgeries at Grand Valley Surgical Center on Leonard Street NE. Jones went to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany earlier this year to operate on U.S. soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.
GRAND RAPIDS — On a normal day in the operating room, West Michigan surgeon Clifford Jones sees his share of broken bones and crushed limbs.
But wounded soldiers from Iraq or Afghanistan with blast injuries, embedded shrapnel or the grisly aftermath of suicide bombs are something else.

Wounds of war bring home new ways of healing

Wounds of war bring home new ways of healing

Iraq War’s medical challenges spawn solutions for civilians

Eric Gay / AP file
Sgt. Tawan Williamson undewent rehabilitation therapy at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio last year. Williamson's left leg was shredded in Iraq when a bomb blew up under his Humvee in June 2006. A high-tech prosthetic leg allows him to run again.
View related photos

Day by day, images of a 4-week invasionFrom the first blasts that rocked Baghdad to the U.S. military's declaration that major combat was over, see images from every day of the conflict.

Commentary
By Dr. Edward V. Craig
Special to msnbc.com
updated 8:28 a.m. ET, Tues., March. 18, 2008

Dr. Edward V. Craig
Throughout history, the experiences of doctors in wartime have led to dramatic advances in civilian medical care.
Hippocrates, best known for the oath every graduating medical student takes, recognized this in 400 B.C. when he wrote that war was a surgeon’s best training ground. Each war has exposed physicians to injuries not seen previously, and the Iraq War — with its signature roadside bombs (in this war’s lingo “improvised explosive devices”) — is no exception.