Military Technology

Chapter 1586 Intelligent Bionic Electronic Kidney

While the introductory video was playing, Wu Hao stepped off the stage to take a short break and drink some water. The makeup artist also took the opportunity to patch up his bottom.

Although there is air conditioning, it cannot accommodate so many people. In addition to the lecture, the sweat has already soaked the back and the makeup on the face is a little blurry.

This was a global live broadcast, so the makeup artist rushed over to touch up his makeup to ensure that his image was intact.

Returning to the stage, Wu Hao continued: "What we are going to release next is also one of our only bionic electronic organ projects, which is the intelligent bionic artificial kidney."

"As we all know, the kidney is one of the most important organs in the human body. It removes and metabolizes metabolites, certain wastes, and toxins in the body by producing urine. At the same time, it can also retain water and other useful substances, such as glucose , protein, amino acids, sodium ions, potassium ions, sodium bicarbonate, etc. to regulate water and electrolyte balance and maintain acid-base balance.

In addition, the kidneys also have endocrine functions and can produce renin, erythropoietin, active vitamin D3, prostaglandins, kinins, etc., and can also be the degradation site for some endocrine hormones in the body and the target organ for extrarenal hormones.

It is precisely because of this that the kidney side can also be the most important metabolic organ in the human body, ensuring the normal metabolism of the human body and ensuring that the body's circulatory system is in a normal and healthy state.

Because of this, the kidney is also one of the organs most susceptible to disease. Every year, tens of millions of patients die from kidney disease around the world.

At present, medicine has a very mature and complete set of treatment methods for kidney diseases. However, for some severe kidney diseases, dialysis and kidney transplantation will eventually be the only method.

Moreover, the results of transplantation for most patients are actually not ideal, and many patients eventually relapse and die.

Currently, for patients with this kind of severe kidney disease, our medical researchers have developed dialysis equipment to assist the kidneys in completing the circulation, purification and removal function of body fluids. With this technology, patients with severe kidney disease can survive for many years with the help of this technology.

However, because continuous dialysis is a kind of torture for patients, and dialysis cannot be performed all the time, toxins accumulate in the body, which is also a kind of damage to the patient's body.

So can we develop a micro-dialysis machine and install it into the patient's body to help the patient circulate, filter and remove body fluids at all times?

In fact, the principle of the dialysis machine sounds very simple. You can think of it as a water purifier or a pre-filter. It's just that one filters impurities in the water, and the other filters harmful substances in the blood.

The technology in this area is actually very mature. What we need to do is to shrink it and then put it into the patient's body.

How to shrink such a large device into the patient's body is the biggest problem we face. Moreover, it involves many disciplines, which also gives our scientific research team a huge test.

After repeated discussions and research with domestic and even international medical experts in nephrology, our scientific research team proposed a total of three design plans, which can also be regarded as three directions.

First of all, the first design solution is to use extracorporeal circulation, but it is to reduce the huge dialysis equipment to a size that the patient can wear at any time. Then you can carry it with you and perform filtration at any time for extracorporeal circulation filtration. Although this will carry something, it will have little impact on the patient's normal life. And from a technical point of view, it is relatively easy to implement.

This solution is relatively conservative, but it is relatively feasible and easy to implement. And the impact on patients is minimal. Our questionnaires with many patients show that patients are relatively acceptable to this method. "

"OK, the second design option is to engage in internal circulation, but it does not replace the kidneys, but assists the kidneys in performing related circulation filtration and removal work. To put it simply, a device is implanted in the kidneys, and then assists the kidneys in completing related tasks. cycle filtering and clearing function.

This idea is good, but the operational space is relatively small and the difficulty is relatively high. The difficulty here not only refers to the technical development difficulty of the implanted device, but also includes the difficulty of the implantation surgery, risk control in the patient's life after surgery, etc.

The kidney is no different than other organs. It is very fragile and can easily break. It is very difficult to implant a device into such an organ. And because of the kidney disease itself, the equipment will undoubtedly increase its burden. In this way, the patient may exercise slightly strenuously after surgery, which can cause tears, damage, etc. to the kidney where the device is implanted. Therefore, we are very cautious about this design plan. "

"As for the third design option, it is more radical. According to the design team's idea, it is to get it right in one step, just like developing an intelligent bionic artificial heart to replace the patient's heart. Why can't we create an intelligent bionic electronic kidney? to replace the patient's kidneys.

This idea is indeed bold, but technically speaking, it is also the most difficult. The function of the kidneys is not as simple as the heart, it is very complex. But in terms of the two functions of filtration and removal of harmful substances and urine secretion, it is more difficult to find a book. It also needs to be reduced to the size of a human kidney and the weight must be strictly controlled.

This is undoubtedly a nightmare requirement for the entire research and development work.

What's more, the functions of the kidneys are not limited to these. It can also secrete adrenaline, prostaglandins, kinins and other material elements. How to realize such a function is also one of the most important problems that plagues the technology research and development team.

Although the technology is very difficult, in terms of long-term development, this technology is undoubtedly the most promising.

Therefore, after some in-depth research and demonstration, we decided to abandon the second set of plans and focus on the research of the third set of plans, taking into account the technical research of the first set of plans.

After the unremitting efforts of our scientific research team, we finally completed the first physical model of an intelligent bionic electronic kidney in May this year, and successfully passed the experiment.

Please see, the one in the photo is our intelligent bionic artificial kidney. It is an engineering prototype in the scientific research stage, so it looks a bit messy and relatively large.

But in terms of function, it can already simulate most of the functions of a real kidney. Moreover, the performance in the experiment was still very impressive, and the results were very gratifying. "