Tag Archives: Medical

Art that educates helps the world in many ways

This is the type of diagram I’d like to see in a doctor’s office. LEGO can be used to make life fun and free for many of us but there are plenty of stories of our favorite plastic parts being used in the professional world for one purpose or another. This display by Nannan Zhang is a marriage of science and art that helps bring light to the inner workings of a disease that plagues millions of people every year. This model of a neuron being attacked by the immune system represents how Multiple Sclerosis affects the central nervous system resulting in the myriad of symptoms that patients experience. White droid arm dendrites connect to a spider web representing the nucleus. A flex hose functions as the axion running through myelin sheaths made with domes and bottom domes that become progressively more broken down by the various colorful immune cells that surround it. Set against that smooth, black background, this piece is fit for display and would surely engage those that saw it in trying to understand more about this disease.

Multiple Sclerosis

Check out some more designs inspired by the medical field or find more by Nannan Zhang on Flickr or Instagram (@nannanz_creations).

A very heart-y tree

Spooky builds don’t have to be all black to get their point across. Anthony Wilson has created a LEGO-based human-tree hybrid called the Aortis Bloom that instead leans into the crimson side of the spectrum. The medically-inclined among us might not even find it creepy – the heart is just a biological necessity, after all. The twisting veins and arteries made from dinosaur tail elements may be a little disquieting, but they’re also very vital to good health. And the blood-red and dark-blue leaves suggest the flowing of oxygen through the system. I’m not sure what those little bits of “fruit” are supposed to represent, though. And just what is the tree sitting in? Dirt? Dried blood? And while really elegant looking, I think that table is actually evil, too. (Just trust me on that.)

Aortis Bloom

If you’d like your October to be a bit more direct with the disquieting images, just take a scroll through our horror archives.

The heroes among us

I won’t lie, this is a scary image to me. Enough of my family (both chosen and biological) are in high-risk groups when it comes to COVID-19. Seeing a possible future, even “just” in LEGO form, is sobering. But this is also an inspirational image. Health care professionals are doing everything in their power to help, often at great personal risk. That, to me, is a level of heroism that deserves to be recognized. Builder Horhat Razvan shares my view, based on this creation. It is part of the Brickenburg Association and LEGO Certified Store Romania initiative #eroiidintrenoi. Which, as you may have guessed, means “the heroes among us.”

The heroes among us

From a LEGO and photographic standpoint, I like the bright light and clean lines captured here. The bed looks completely functional, as does the supporting equipment. Printed tiles give just the right level of technical detail to the setting, and the use of a pneumatic T-piece for the ventilator is both apt and clever. Razvan says that they would have given the minfigures the correct protective gear, but they lacked those parts. (Shortages seem like a common theme, sadly.)

Even when this crisis passes, let’s all do our best to keep health care professionals in our highest regard. Because this is what they do. They care. Every day.

LEGO Builders on the half shell: a history of helping turtles and tortoises [Feature]

Last month, a story on LEGO bricks being used to help an injured turtle went viral. An Eastern box turtle was found with multiple fractures on its plastron (the name for the underside of a turtle/tortoise shell). Veterinary staff at the Maryland Zoo of Baltimore performed surgery, but they were concerned about allowing the turtle to move freely while healing properly. According to zoo employee Dr. Ellen Bronson, turtles take much longer to recover than mammals and birds due to a slower metabolism.

To help the turtle move without injuring itself again, Garrett Fraess (the Zoo’s veterinarian extern) and his colleagues sketched out some plans for a wheelchair…

Click here to read how people help turtles to recover…

Now hear this! Now hear this!

Listen up! Here’s something you don’t see every day — a cross-sectional model of the human ear, built from LEGO bricks. The work of South Korean builder Jin Kei, this is a large-scale sculpture with (as far as I can tell) an excellent level of accuracy detail. I’m a particular fan of the shaping of the Inner Ear organs in dark blue, and the rendering of the skull cross section in white with red dots to represent the honeycomb-like structure of bone.

JinKei_ - 49

I’d like to see more large-scale medical LEGO sculptures please. Could someone build me a model of a spleen?

Dream machine

It’s always nice when you can mix business and pleasure… Canadian anesthesiologist and LEGO fan Lucie Filteau spends much of her time next to a GE Aisys C2 anesthesia machine, so she decided to build a LEGO version of it to raffle off at a recent fundraiser. You can compare it to the real thing, and even see it in action – LEGO style!