Future shock

In twenty years time, visiting the doctor maybe a thing of the past, something that you used to do as a child. Dr Krishna of the BSH talks all about the future that’s already here.

If you are trying to find a healthy lifestyle, you would be forgiven for believing that everything is bad for us: everything we eat gives us cancer; our lifestyles are so stress filled that we court coronary failure just by getting out of bed and the drugs we take to make us feel better render their benefits irrelevant when side effects are taken into account. Medicine, it would seem is bad for our health.

Luckily, that is only part of the picture; our future life on earth lies on the cusp of technological developments in medicine.

Renowned futurologist, Ray Kurzweil (whose recent book was subtitled, ‘When Humans Transcend Biology’) speaks of a time where medicine no longer involves drugs or surgery and humans can effectively live forever. What sounds like science fiction is not only a very possible reality, it is closer than you might have assumed.

In his offices at the Bahrain Specialist Hospital, General and Laparoscopic Surgeon Dr Krishna is animated by talk of the future. “In 20 years time, there will no more open surgery; everything will be done with minimum invasion, laparoscopic techniques.” As a specialist in the field, he is well qualified to speak on the matter. “The field didn’t really come of age until the late 1990’s and in the six years I have been practicing, what can be done has progressed beyond recognition.”

No more than two decades ago the only procedures that could be enacted through the keyhole - as it has come to be known - were simple organ procedures where the entire organ - a gall bladder, for example - would be removed. Today more and more procedures, including brain and spinal work, are being conducted with the technique, allowing patients to endure far less stress on the body and to recover more quickly.

The techniques employed with laparoscopy go much further than this and remote surgeries are now a reality. “I could have a patient who requires an unusual procedure, something I am not familiar with,” (one facet of laparoscopy is that Ft is continually evolving and updating itself; Dr Krishna attends several international conventions and workshops a year, just to keep his skills up-to-date) “and a colleague in Europe could view exactly what I see through a real time video link and advise me, or even take control of my instruments and enact the procedure remotely.”

Robotic doctors then. The idea was introduced in 1985 when a robot was used to place the needle in a brain biopsy procedure. It has been something aggressively pursued by both military and civilian physicians due to the techniques’ ability of allowing distance between patient and surgeon. For the military, it keeps the medic out of harms way and for civilians it introduces the possibility of centralising medical care with robotic outposts; something seen as integral to developing health care provision in the developing world.

Going further, both Kurzweil and Dr Krishna talk of a time where nanotechnology will dispense with today’s “archaic” drugs and surgery. As Kurzweil puts it, “We discovered drugs that had benefits but also many side effects. We did not have the means to design interventions but that is changing. With the completion of the human genome project and the advent of techniques such as RNA interference which turns off the genes that promote disease and ageing, medicine has transformed itself into an information technology.”

Krishna agrees. “Not very far away is a place where only organ transplants will require open surgery.” With the many and regular developments in stem cell research, however, perhaps even transplants will no longer be required and we will be able to grow a new heart from stem cells collected at birth from our umbilical chords.

Now, if we can just stay alive long enough, maybe we can life forever!

The Bahrain Specialist Hospital is located in Juffair;

Tel. +973 1781 2166, 1781 2200, 1781 2222, 1771 2000 or visit www.bsh.com.bh.

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