How a boiler engineer repaired his own heart
 

This is pretty cool what he did I think

How a boiler engineer repaired his own heart. [VIDEO]

Amazing what can be done when the BS is removed.

The biggest obstacles to progress are jargon, professional jealousies, and turf wars.
Here, we generally disagree over simple stuff, like politics. Kindergarten stuff compared to the obstacles in the medical field.

Funny, lower aortic aneurysm is a genetic defect in my family affecting the men. I had thought about something along those lines being a solution for us when the problem shows up. Doesn't happen that often, but tends to kill when it does. And the final ignominy? Common place for the occurance is sitting on the throne, doing what you do. Presure pops it. Lost a cousin that way. Uncle was discovered to have it by accident. And he was the doctor in the family!
Not a bit surprised a piping guy would solve the problem. Surprised he was able to push his idea through to his own chest. Bravo to him!

I love this. When I was a kid and took a biology class I wanted to be a doctor, my dad (an engineer) told me to work on a car and get use to the ideas of how systems work together before comitting to medicine. now i'm an engineer lol. I remember talking to my autoshop teacher about his stomach cancer some time after he retired, but before he passed away. told me the cancer had blocked his nsulin injector, causing him to become diabetic.

I think its funny how in reality its all very similar, but the diffrent professions have grown so far apart in todays world. Anyone remember Leonardo da Vinci? that guy seemed to understand all of this.

isnt that how they found Elvis when he shuffled his mortal coil (on the toilet)

When I was facing neck surgery some years ago, I was researching options. Artifical cervical discs weren't approved at the time. I talked to an engineer of medical devices with a similar problem to mine. He had invented an artificial disc for his own neck. He couldn't find anyone to implant it. He ended up going to Switzerland and getting a commercial artificial disc implanted.

I have Marfan syndrome and annually get my aortic root measured. I may at some point in time get this surgery done- I've already had a artificial mitral valve installed so I take warfarin everyday. It's not so bad- I don't feel any different; but I do worry about future issues.

I like what he said about people from different professional disciplines working together because different people from different fields have different ways of viewing problems. :)

Look at James Watt or George Stephenson. Neither were parts of the established academic problem solving elites.

This is true. I work in the medical device industry and this is a familiar device our company has (aortic root graft).

The design of the medical device has to surpass the biocompatibility testing standards set, in our case, by ISO. However, it has to do this in combination with surpassing the engineering aspect. Compromises have to be made in terms of materials used, as some materials prove to be very good in, for example, creating a heart valve frame, but could be very toxic to the patient.

Also, delivery systems are evolving to allow high-risk patients the candidacy of receiving such devices, without the need for open heart surgery. As an example, some valves are delivered through the an incision in the femoral artery (through the groin/thigh area), up the aorta and loop back down for delivery. Or, some valves are trans-apical, meaning it goes through an incision at the apex of the heart. Of course, the valve has to be crimped and "shrunken" to allow the valve to be delivered in a smooth manner, but at the same time has to be able to be expanded and placed in position at the point of delivery.

This, while all the time receiving the proper sterilization treatment accorded such devices (some sterilization treatments degrade certain materials).

Same here.

In the late 1990's, I worked for a company where the owner and executives wanted to grow the company, but met a number of obstacles over a 4 year period, and was actually making less money per FY than they did prior...it seemed as though they were always looking at it with the wrong mindset.

They built a team of members, including myself, from different disciplines and experiences and had us sit down to design a new business plan where waste was dramatically decreased, we needed to become more environmentally friendly, and our plan had to allow the company to be able to increase our customer base as well as generate at least $5M more in business.

The project was called the Mount Everest Project.

This team consisted of a young engineer, a person from purchasing, another from maintenance, another from shipping and receiving, and a welder, a machinist, an assembler, and a janitor.

After a month of daily meetings, and another month of each of us going back to our teams and taking every suggestion seriously, we had our final meeting and presented out findings and suggestions to the executive team.

The executive team agreed to implement the plan, without tweaking it, for 12 months. In that 12 month period, we went from a $30M a year company to a $50M company. We were able to trim waste, increase revenue, and set plans for the future...all by bringing people together from different backgrounds and listening to their POV on the topic.

Odd as it may sound, the largest savings in wasted money idea came from the janitor...someone who never stepped foot in a college or study economics.