A scoping review on microgravity medicine: Challenges and breakthroughs in space healthcare

Abstract

Human space travel is revolutionizing dramatically. Upcoming space missions are pushing all the boundaries of modern human technologies, with increased travel distance and duration than ever before. The growth of commercial spaceflight has also enabled more astronauts to travel in space. This diverse number of people needs medical care in space for a safe and productive space mission. Because of space’s unique environment, several physiological and psychological conditions, including bone loss, skeletal muscle atrophy, vision changes, and space flight-associated neuroocular syndrome (SANS), may impact an astronaut’s health. That’s why understanding the unique healthcare challenges of space is essential for long-duration missions and for establishing human habitation beyond Earth. This review summarizes previous existing literature to provide an overview of the current state of microgravity medicine, with a focus on available biomedical technologies in space such as 3D bioprinting, tissue engineering, small tissue chips, biosensors, astropharmacy, robotic telesurgery along with the key challenges associated with those and the innovative solutions. By analyzing various sources like conference papers, journals, review articles and books, this scoping review includes 25 articles that includes breathtaking innovations related to human healthcare in space.