Better Chest Cavity Closure

Johns Hopkins students have devised a better way to close up the chest cavity after open-heart surgery.

What surprised me the most about this news is that for a half-century, this is what we've been doing to people:

... surgeons usually cut through the breastbone. After correcting the heart problem, they reconnect the sternum by piercing it with steel wires, pulling the bone segments together and twisting the wires tight.

Ow.

Undergraduates at Johns Hopkins invented a chest closure system that threads locking polymer clasps through the ribs. It looks just like a stapler. See the link for more pics.