@littlebartjaco@Oom_Rugby "Deon Fourie, aged 83, has been cast in the starring role in the newly-announced eponymous biopic 'Deon', celebrating the career of the 6-time Rugby World Cup winner.
Fourie is expected to shoot his scenes between Stormers pre-season training commitments."
@JJ_Stellies I'm 9 away from my 365-day badge and yesterday also did for me! Got it on the 6th attempt because there was literally nothing else I could do with the rubbish left untried. 😅
A surgeon in South Africa just made the deaf hear again.
With bones that came out of a printer.
Professor Mashudu Tshifularo walked into Steve Biko Academic Hospital in Pretoria in March 2019 and did something no one on the planet had ever pulled off.
He replaced a man's shattered middle ear bones with custom titanium versions printed from a 3D scan of his own anatomy.
The patient? A 35-year-old who lost his hearing in a car crash.
The fix? The hammer, anvil, and stirrup. Those three tiny ossicles that turn vibrations in the air into the sound of your kid laughing or your favourite song playing.
Tshifularo printed perfect replicas, slid them in through an endoscope, and closed up in roughly an hour and a half.
No giant incision. No facial nerve damage. No scarring across the side of the skull.
Just a camera, a printed bone, and a man who could suddenly hear again.
The technique works on anyone. Babies born without functional middle ears. Adults wrecked by infection or trauma. Pensioners losing their world to silence.
Because the implants are scanned and printed per patient, they snap into place like they were always meant to be there. And titanium is biocompatible, so the body doesn't reject them.
By 2026, the procedure has moved into expanded clinical trials with dozens more patients lined up.
One man, one printer, one quiet revolution in how humans get their hearing back.
Source: BBC Science Focus