When Switzerland’s Luka Krizanac was 12-years-old, he had a case of strep throat that turned deadly. As a result of mismanagement in his treatment, the strep throat turned into a life-threatening sepsis infection. In order to survive, he had to have his legs and hands amputated. Now, 17 years later, Krizanac gets to shake hands with the surgeon and Philadelphian hospital staff that gave him a successful double hand transplant.
“I started hoping for this as a child,” Krizanac told CBS News. While Krizanac was able to walk as a child thanks to prosthetics, there were no prosthetics available or sophisticated enough to replace his hands. Now, as an adult, Krizanac is elated at his ability to text on his phone and hold a water bottle.
“It gives me so much joy to be able to do that completely on my own,” Krizanac said. “You need your hands to survive, you need it for the most basic independence in life. Regaining hands after 17 years, I don’t think there is a bigger dream than that.”
Getting a hand transplant is incredibly rare, with less than 300 people in the world having received one—much less getting transplants for both hands. One of the multiple reasons why hand transplant surgery is so rare is because of all of the factors required to find a hand transplant donor. The donation doesn’t just need to match the recipient’s blood type, but the donated hand needs to match the recipient’s age, skin color, and size. Nevertheless, Krizanac’s family moved from Switzerland to Philadelphia to be closer to Penn Medicine, a hospital with a highly respected transplant team. After nearly two decades of waiting and searching for a donor, Krizanac was able to not just gain one hand, but two.
“It is still a miracle today to have two hands basically because I did not have that for almost 17 years,” said Krizanac.
After the procedure, Krizanac and his family moved back to Zurich, Switzerland, but still flies back over to Philadelphia to follow up with his doctors. Since the transplant, Krizanac has been slowly gain more function and ability with his hands, and is now able to feel hot and cold sensations with them as nerves continue to grow. Krizanac is incredibly grateful to the donor family, saying that they “changed not just my life but my family’s life forever.”
Krizanac’s double hand transplant is one of an ever-growing number of landmark organ and limb transplants in recent years. In May of 2023, a surgical team over at NYU Langone Health performed the first ever whole-eye and partial-face transplant on a military veteran who suffered an electrical accident at work. In July 2024, a throat cancer patient regained his ability to speak and swallow food on his own after receiving the very first total larynx transplant.
It’s encouraging to see that Krizanac can now grab the world with both hands, and to witness the huge strides in medicine to make organ and limb transplants more achievable. However, none of these medical achievements are possible without a strong pool of potential donors willing to help. If you would like to become an organ donor, you can research to find out how to sign up and register in your state.
Brenda and Brian Marquis are part of a growing senior population with mental and physical ailments. In particular, Brian has dementia from a brain injury he sustained in 2012. Brenda would help Brian remember to wash himself, eat lunch, and other tasks. On top of that, both live with other physical, cognitive, and emotional disabilities that make day-to-day living difficult. Then came “Robbie.”
“Robbie” is the robot that helps the Marquis family with their daily routines at home. Resembling a coat rack, the robot was presented to the Marquis family after Brenda sent an email to the University of New Hampshire inquiring about robotic service dogs. Booker T. Bones, the family’s service dog, had passed away and Brenda was looking for similar support. The university saw this as an opportunity for its computer science center to experiment with “socially assistive” robots.
This Home Robot Actually Works! This robot might beat humanoids to the home. Hello Robot’s Stretch 4 is a wheeled robot with an arm, built to move safely, reach objects, and help with real daily tasks. It may not look like a sci-fi butler, but practical robots like this could arrive first. Would you trust a robot like this in your home? Robot Center https://robotcenter.co.uk/ Robots of London https://robotsoflondon.co.uk/ Robot Philosophy https://robophil.com/ Business enquiries sales@robotcenter.co.uk robotics robots ai automation futuretech technology innovation humanoidrobot homerobot robotnews assistiverobot #robophilosophy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oI53NrJtQ_I https://www.youtube.com/shorts/hCRiRGtbGvk
“Our goal is not to replace a human caregiver but to use technology such as robots to provide complementary care,” Sajay Arthanat, a professor in UNH’s Department of Occupational Therapy told WMUR. “We know that caregivers often have to perform a lot of repetitive, mundane tasks.”
What exactly is “Robbie”?
“Robbie” is a Stretch 4 robot model invented by Hello Robot. While a very simple in design, the robot is able to help Brian with a number of tasks. It reminds him to eat meals at specific times, fetches items such as water bottles out of the fridge, reads the fine print of prescription medications, and more. Stretch 4 also has prompts that activate when he enters certain rooms of the home, such as the bathroom.
“I was never into technology,” Brian Marquis said to Sentinel Colorado. “Then I realized I can’t remember to wash my face and my armpits. So, it just really kind of set me free almost.”
Robbie hasn’t just helped Brian live more independently, but Brenda as well. She doesn’t have to be by Brian’s side 24/7. Now, she can go out and play mahjong with her friends without worrying about leaving Brian alone for several hours.
I saw this in South Korea. This is Robocare, two companion robots for eldercare. This robots to help prevent elderly people’s dementia by providing game content to improve brain power. The robot, via positioning system, monitors elderly people’s walking paces in real-time and is integrated with smartwatches and wrist bands to analyze users’ sleeping and daily activities. DIGITIMES Asia reports #robot#robotics#engineering#stem#aihacks
Per the Department of Health and Human Services, the majority of older adults are projected to need long-term care and service. This could range from basic needs to extreme health cases. In addition, a 2025 report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that 38.2 million people provided unpaid elder care. Around 28% of those people provided nearly four hours of unpaid elder care per day.
The number of people who need such help is projected to grow exponentially. By 2030, the number of Americans over 65 is expected to surpass the number under 18 for the first time in U.S. history. The number of Americans over 65 years old is projected to reach 82 million, a 40% growth from 2022.
This is, in part, why there has been such massive investment in robots and A.I. specializing in caring for elderly people. It’s not just to ensure that the elderly have the assistance they need for day-to-day tasks. Eldercare robots also boost their patient’s confidence by allowing them to live as safely and independently as they can. In addition to task-oriented robots like Stretch 4, there are also robots to assist with mobility.
Robotics are helping improve the lives of the elderly as a new and exciting care option. With the help of medication, personal care from a human, community, and more, the growing elderly population can thrive through their golden years. For more eldercare resources, visit the National Institute on Aging.
Whether through use of a robot or not, finding solutions to aid and care for our older populations ultimately benefits society as a whole.
Photo credit: LPETTET/E+/Getty Images –
End-of-life decisions can be complicated, and ethics consultants may help families and care teams navigate them.
A surgeon prepares to amputate a patient’s foot to save his life, but the patient refuses the procedure. His decline in thinking and memory raises doubts about his ability to consent, and he has no family or friends to help with the decision.
A 17-year-old declines a liver transplant, while her mother insists on going forward with the lifesaving surgery.
Siblings stand divided at the bedside of their 85-year-old mother with dementia, one rejecting a feeding tube, the other calling it a basic human necessity.
I am a hospital ethics consultant, and these are the kinds of situations my colleagues and I regularly encounter. Yet many people are unaware that hospital ethics consultants even exist – or that they can ask for one.
Who are hospital ethics consultants?
Healthcare ethics consultants are trained to help patients, families and clinicians navigate difficult medical decisions.
They could be called in situations where healthcare staff struggles with providing procedures such as cardiac resuscitation that are unlikely to benefit the patient and might even cause more pain and suffering. They could also be called when it is unclear who has authority to consent for a patient’s care, or when end-of-life decisions are complicated and resources are limited – such as ICU beds and ventilators during COVID-19.
Ethics consultants come from a range of disciplines: physicians, nurses, social workers, chaplains, lawyers and philosophers who have specialized training and experience in clinical ethics. Since 2018, ethics consultants are increasingly pursuing formal certification through the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities.
What is their origin?
The modern field of bioethics emerged from the 1947 Nuremberg Doctors’ Trial, where Nazi physicians were prosecuted for conducting brutal medical experiments on imprisoned people.
This led to the 1947 framework outlining ethically acceptable human research called the Nuremberg Code, written by a panel of American judges. The 1979 Ethical Principles and Guidelines for Protections of Human Subjects of Research, called the Belmont Report, followed the Nuremberg Code. The Belmont Report turned the ethical ideals of respect for persons, beneficence – to do good – and justice into a regulatory framework to protect vulnerable and marginalized medical research participants in the U.S.
In the 1980s, many of these ethics protections moved from the research lab to the patient bedside. During this time, lifesaving technologies such as the ventilator, dialysis machine and organ transplantation created new, difficult ethical questions: When should life support end? Who decides? And what happens when there aren’t enough resources?
A series of court cases and laws expanded patients’ rights, with the Patient Self-Determination Act, a 1990 law which upheld patient rights to refuse or accept medical treatment, marking the key turning point.
Lifesaving technologies have revolutionized medicine, but they also raise ethical questions about who receives care when resources are scarce. Jackyenjoyphotography/Moment via Getty Images
High-profile court cases exposed the ethical dilemmas around end-of-life care and patient self-determination. The 1976 case, In re Quinlan, involved Karen Ann Quinlan, a young woman in a persistent vegetative state whose family sought permission from the court to withdraw her ventilator.
Following In re Quinlan was the 1990 case, Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health, which affirmed that adults have the right to refuse life-sustaining treatment.
Both cases became touchstones for how ethics consultants and care teams navigate the life‑and‑death decisions that have become routine in an era of life‑sustaining technology.
A member of the healthcare team usually requests an ethics consult when they face conflict or uncertainty about the care of a patient. Patients and families can also request an ethics consultation, but in reality, few know this option exists or feel empowered to use it.
The ethics consultant’s first task is to gather as much information as possible from everyone involved to understand the full context of the case. Importantly, ethics consultants do not make treatment decisions; they assist the people who do.
Imagine a loved one with advanced dementia who is in the intensive care unit with respiratory failure and is on a ventilator. The physician believes further treatment will prolong suffering; the family is not willing to let him go.
An ethics consultant would be called by the family or healthcare team to slow things down, provide space to reflect, and help navigate the situation. The ethics consultant will often meet with everyone involved to ensure that all voices are heard and that the patient’s wishes remain central to the discussion.
As part of the ethics review, the ethics consultant would draw on their knowledge of policies, laws and ethical precedent about withdrawing life-sustaining treatment to provide some guardrails for the situation. In this case, a legal guardrail might be that the physician cannot remove the ventilator without the family’s consent.
Rather than making a decision, the ethics consultant would then outline the ethical options available from which the patient, family, and healthcare team can choose.
Why are ethics consultants a valuable resource?
Ethics consultants are trained to help people work through not just the medical facts, but the deeply human questions beneath them: What counts as an acceptable quality of life? How do we weigh hope against suffering? How can we know what a patient would want if they cannot speak for themselves?
In these moments, decisions can feel urgent and heavy, and communication can easily break down. Ethics consultants don’t take decisions away from patients or families, and they don’t replace the role of clinicians. Instead, they help ensure that everyone understands the situation, that different perspectives are heard and that the conversation stays grounded in the values and goals of the patient.
They also bring something that families often don’t realize they need until tensions rise: a calm, measured presence. By clarifying misunderstandings, naming sources of conflict and guiding difficult conversations, they help families and care teams find a way forward together.
The choices may still be painful – and there may be no perfect answer – but with the right support, those decisions can feel more thoughtful, more shared and more aligned with what matters most.
As the economy is in flux, the price of everything is increasing, including dating. According to some reports, an average night out has risen to nearly $200. For this reason and others, a new trend is forming for Millennials and Gen Z that’s been dubbed “solo-maxxing.” While these solo-maxxers are doing activities without a partner, they’re not lonely. In fact, they’re thriving.
Solo-maxxing is one of several “maxxing trends” that have become popular points of discussion on social media. In short, “maxxing” is slang for maximizing and optimizing a specific part of life to its fullest potential. For example, “looksmaxxing” is trying to enhance a person’s physical appearance through beauty routines, exercise, and the like. A person who takes melatonin, puts on a white noise machine, has full blackout curtains in their bedroom, etc. could be “sleepmaxxing.”
In this case, solo-maxxing is a similar maxxing self-care trend that has people reframing singlehood. While the higher price tags for dates and dating apps are a motivator, these solo-maxxers’ main motivation is to achieve contentment through independence without a partner. It’s making living the single life one that is desirable and by choice. Whether it’s burnout from dating or the expense, a survey of 14,380 adults aged 18 to 34 found that life was “more peaceful” when not in a relationship.
The appeal of solo-maxxing is multi-faceted. There is a sense of stability and independence in that you’re on your own. While a person still has to worry about their own finances, goals, happiness, etc., there is no pressure or distraction to shift focus onto another person’s situation as well. Eyes on their own paper. Many of these solo-maxxers are using their non-dating time to learn a new skill, try a new hobby, and/or pursue a passion. They are dedicating their time and resources to make themselves a complete person without needing another half.
Solo-maxxing vs. loneliness
While this is all well and good, it can be easy to just adopt the term solo-maxxing to hide a loneliness issue. The high cost of dating also contributes to the high loneliness epidemic among Gen Z. Other reasons for this loneliness include less physical third-spaces, overall expenses, and social media.
This loneliness shouldn’t be confused with solo-maxxing. After all, maximizing yourself as an unattached person doesn’t mean you’re physically by yourself, you’re just self-focused. Solo-maxxing can look like going to cooking classes so you don’t have to rely on anyone for delicious meals. It can mean signing up at a dojo to learn a martial art. If what you are doing is helping build confidence and isn’t just avoiding people, it is likely a positive solo-maxxing activity.
It is important to fully analyze and be honest with yourself when participating in this trend. If you’re masking loneliness and depression with a solo-maxxing label, you may want to reconsider and seek help. However, solo-maxxing is an option if you are burnt out by the dating scene, don’t want to waste money on potential dates that go nowhere, and have goals that a relationship might hinder.
Who knows? Maybe during a solo-maxxing activity you meet a fellow solo-maxxer and later decide to become duo-maxxers. Even if not, you can still feel confident and complete in life just on your own.
