Promise of 'Bladder Pacemaker' for People With Spinal Cord Injury.

AScribe Health News Service, January, 2005

Byline: Duke University

DURHAM, N.C., Jan. 27 (AScribe Newswire) -- Biomedical engineers at Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering have demonstrated for the first time that stimulating a specific nerve in the pelvis triggers the process that causes urine to begin flowing out from the bladder, refuting conventional thinking that "bladder emptying" requires signals from the brain.

Their research, carried out with animals, could lead to a "bladder pacemaker" to restore bladder control for the more than 200,000 Americans living with spinal cord injury (SCI) or disease-related spinal cord problems.

Neural engineer Warren Grill and biomedical engineering doctoral candidate Joseph Boggs found that applying small electrical currents to the...

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