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The Increasing Popularity Of Endoscopes

Although it was once used only by medical staff as an expensive tool that helped identify certain internal problems that patients had, endoscopes are now becoming more widely used for many different applications. Plumbers can now use endoscopes, although these devices are called borescopes, as they are not used for the human body.

While some people like to call them “snake cameras” endoscopes have an appearance that reminds one of a snake, thanks to being long and consisting of a flexible wire which houses a tiny camera that lets the person investigating have a better look of what is happening in a small space. Usually, with these devices, you also get a real-time image shown on a screen, and that allows the user to get a better insight into the problem.

First designed in 1806 in Germany, endoscopes didn’t use electricity but a system that relied on lenses and reflected light. As one might expect, using such a tool to examine the internal parts of a human body was a revelation for that time. For that reason, the ingenious invention was not approved at first by prestigious institutions like the Vienna Medical Society in Europe.

It was only 60 years later when the endoscope became electric, but only in 1908 did the inventors manage to create light bulbs small enough to be placed on such a device. Of course, as time went by, endoscopes became smaller and smaller, and their flexibility increased.

They are now essential tools in the medical field, but they also serve well in the industry, and even in households. If you are looking to have your own endoscope to use around the house or for practice, this guide from Opticsandlab.com should give you more information about different models.

Endoscopes are hard to clean

As a recent article from The New York Times shows, endoscopes are really useful, but even in the medical field, they are extremely hard to sterilize. Recent outbreaks of sickened patients that have been examined using endoscopes or duodenoscopes have forced experts to consider redesigning this old instrument.

In the medical field, these devices are used to the extreme for diagnosing certain illnesses such as those of the pancreas and bile ducts. Reaching those small places is impossible without this device, and without actually cutting around the area, there is no other way of finding out if a person suffers or not.

One of the disadvantages of these devices is that they are small and cannot be cleaned well enough. Medical staff hand-scrub them as best as possible, and after that, the endoscopes go through machines that should clean them much like dishwashers. However, that is not enough to keep them clean.

Having this in mind, if you are going to buy an endoscope to use at home, it is better if you don’t actually use it to examine a person, even if you are a trained professional in the medical field. Instead, you would be better off using them for investigating problems that you might get in your home in small spaces, or even in your car.

They still offer innovative

The Daily Mail discussed how endoscopes can still make an impact, as recent studies suggest there can be a new way to treat diabetes, with the help of balloons heated and placed in areas where new blood cells can grow.

An IT consultant from London recently benefited from a revolutionary treatment that allows him to regenerate blood cells at a faster rate and as such overcome diabetes. For this to happen, the doctors had to use an endoscope to enter the duodenum and feeding a catheter inside with the help of a guidewire, they managed to insert a small balloon that when inflated with hot water burned the area where insulin is produced, to help the organism create more of it.

Nowadays you can have endoscope cameras that can attach to your phone and be used that way. They should be compatible with both iOS and Android devices, and they should have a decently long cable to allow you to inspect areas that you can’t usually reach.


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The Increasing Popularity Of Endoscopes

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