A palette of vividly colored VIBES, a small hearing aid from Siemens.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Not that they’d care to admit it, but the nation’s 78 million Baby Boomers are aging fast.

Lucky for them, medical advances are keeping pace. When Boomers were born, heart disease or cancer amounted to death sentences. Arthritic hips and knees meant years of limping.

Now, Boomers can live for decades after heart attacks or cancer. And knee replacements and hip replacements let patients walk as well as they ever did.

“We’re at an exciting time,” said Dr. Gene Shieh, a radiation oncologist at Jupiter Medical Center. “Computers and mechanical capabilities are catching up to the things previous generations of doctors wished they could do.”

After breast cancer, a better way to rebuild

Dr. Martin Newman is an expert at reconstructing the breasts of women who lose a breast to cancer.

But even with his years of experience, Newman admits he never was completely sure which tissue to remove and which to leave. The problem nagged him, because making the wrong call can lead to complications such as pain, bleeding, infection and even the need for another operation.

A few years ago, Newman and his colleague, Dr. Michel Samson, had a brainstorm: The two Cleveland Clinic Florida plastic surgeons tried the laser used by heart surgeons to help with reconstruction.

He trains the laser on the patient during surgery, and it reads blood flow and tells him which tissue to remove and which to keep. The result, Newman said, is a “remarkable” decrease in complications.

“The lasers seem to give us a clear-cut window into tissue viability,” Newman said. “It tells us what’s going to live and what’s going to die. The ability of the laser to make that decision far exceeds the ability of the surgeon to make that decision.”

The technique is novel enough that Samson and Newman have spoken at medical conferences around the world, and doctors in other parts of the country have followed suit.

A more precise knee replacement

Dr. Norman Palmeri says knee replacement is a lot like carpentry, and he doesn’t just mean the part about drilling a knee-to-hip hole in the femur. He’s also referring to the less-than-precise technique of aligning the new knee in the patient’s leg.

“Basically, it’s a lot of eyeballing,” said Palmeri, an orthopedic surgeon in Port St. Lucie, Fla. “There’s been a big emphasis on finding a way to make that more accurate.”

Now comes a high-tech method for replacing knees that removes the guesswork. Before surgery, Palmeri orders an MRI of the patient, which is sent to the factory of California-based OtisMed. The company’s computers make a custom kit designed to fit the patient’s leg.

OtisMed’s technology means he no longer must drill a hole in the patient’s femur or install a two-foot rod to hold the new knee in place. And because the computer has decided how to align the artificial joint, there’s no need for eyeballing.

‘Neurosurgery in a needle’

An hour ago, Arnie Goldberg couldn’t turn his head without pain. Half an hour ago, he winced as Dr. Lawrence Gorfine inserted five needles into his neck near his right ear.

And now, he swivels his head from side to side as he sits in a post-operative bed in Gorfine’s office.

“I have no pain,” Goldberg tells Gorfine. “It’s like a miracle.”

Gorfine is an enthusiastic proponent of a procedure he calls “neurosurgery in a needle.” Through thread-thin needles like the ones inserted in Goldberg’s neck, Gorfine uses radiofrequency — a 180-degree blast of high-intensity sound waves — to deaden nerves in inflamed areas.

The result? The patient can turn his head without pain. The effects last for nine months to a year, until the burned nerve endings grow back and begin registering pain again.

Gorfine recommends the procedure to patients who suffer chronic neck pain that doesn’t respond to cortisone shots.

Gorfine says there’s little downside to the radiofrequency procedure but he acknowledges, it does nothing to heal damaged disks.

“One day, stem cells are going to be the answer — maybe,” Gorfine says.

Using patient’s own blood to avoid surgery

The hottest development in sports medicine is surprisingly low tech. It involves little more than injecting scarred tendons or damaged ligaments with a patient’s own blood.

The procedure is known as platelet-rich plasma, or PRP, and Dr. David Westerdahl of Cleveland Clinic Florida’s West Palm Beach office has tried it on a few patients, including a football player at Florida Atlantic University.

Here’s how it works: Westerdahl takes a small syringe of blood from the patient, then spins the blood in a centrifuge for 15 minutes, a process that separates blood platelets from red blood cells. The spinning yields a teaspoon of platelet-rich plasma.

Westerdahl then injects the PRP into the injured area. While scientific evidence remains sketchy, the experience of athletes like Ward convinces doctors that PRP stimulates healing.

PRP is best-suited to athletes who suffer some muscle or ligament injuries or chronic tendinitis such as tennis elbow, plantar fasciitis, Achilles tendinitis or patellar tendinitis. Westerdahl recommends it for patients whose pain hasn’t responded to ice, stretching, physical therapy or a cortisone shot.

For most people, he sees PRP as a last shot before the operating table. Insurers don’t cover the procedure, which costs about $1,000.

Hearing aids as fashion accessories

Hearing aids are getting a makeover — just as Baby Boomers feel the effects of all those Bruce Springsteen and Rolling Stones concerts. Experts say millions of Americans have hearing loss that goes untreated, in part because of the none-too-hip reputation of hearing aids.

The latest devices not only work better but include features such as Bluetooth software that connects with cell phones and iPods, said Dr. Cindy Beyer, senior vice president at HearUSA, a West Palm Beach-based company.

And the hearing aids that cover the entire ear opening are not as common as they once were. Today’s hearing aids go behind the ear and are connected to a thin tube that goes into the ear.

And for those who envision hearing aids as fashion accessories, it’s possible to buy tubes in a variety of colors.