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Wednesday, October 26, 2005
A new saber of plasma kills bacteria
By Zosimo T. Literatus, R.M.T.
Breakthroughs
Medical science may have gone beyond the technology of Star Wars.
Imagine a Jedi saber of plasma gas (not of light) generated from atoms stripped of their electrons (negative charges) that are as hot as solar flares and lightning bolts!
That same saber is available today in a miniature form. It comes in a handheld device, referred to by scientists as a “plasma needle.”
The thin plume of charged gas generated by the devise can kill bacteria without damaging the infected tissues and the healthy surrounding ones.
It also has potential use in surgical procedures against tumors and cancerous growths.
“It allows you to treat an area in a very precise way,” says physicist Mounir Laroussi. The 12-centimeter long “Plasma Needle” was developed by Laroussi and his colleague Xinpei Lu. Both Laroussi and Lu are professors at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Center for Bioelectrics of the Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, USA.
Plasmas, the fourth state of matter, are conductive mixtures of charged particles, neutrals and fields that exhibit collective effects. They carry electrical currents and generate magnetic fields. They are the most common form of matter, comprising more than 99% of the visible universe, and permeate the solar system, interstellar and intergalactic environments. They are generated in the flares of the sun (solar flares) and around lightning bolts. Their violent birth indicates that their ions move very fast and their temperatures in thousands of degrees.
In a recent study, conducted by Raymond E. J. Sladek and Eva Stoffels-Adamowicz, plasma needle treatment on a laboratory-grown population of Eschericia coli showed that 100,000 to 1,000,000 colony-forming units (equivalent to a size of 12 mm of bacterial growth on a laboratory culture media) were destroyed after 10 seconds of treatment. Sladek and Stoffels are professors at the Department of Biomedical Engineering Materials Technology of the Eindhoven University of Technology in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. The researchers recommended that plasma power and treatment time should not exceed 150 milliwatt (mW) and 60 seconds, respectively.
But Laroussi’s device was so controlled as to be non-lethal to both the physician and the patient. The device uses helium as a carrier gas, producing very little ozone with the gas temperature remaining at room temperature even after hours of operation. The plasma plume can be touched with bare hands and can be directed manually by a user to come in contact with delicate objects and materials, including the skin and dental gum without causing any heating or pain. “I have put my hand in the plume many times without anything happening,” says Laroussi, who describes the device in this year’s issue of Applied Physics Letters.
Unlike conventional chemical treatments that kill bacteria, no residues can result to be washed away afterwards. “It’s essentially a chemical etching process where the reactive chemicals are being generated at the flick of a switch,” says Bill Graham, a plasma physicist at Queen’s University in Belfast, North Ireland.
The greatest achievement of applied medical technology is determined by the worst disease it can destroy. As Han Solo once said: “Well, you can forget your troubles with those imperial slugs. Now let’s blow this thing and go home.” (For comments or suggestions, email the writer at ztliteratus6046@lycos.com)
(October 26, 2005 issue)
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