Heart disease costs billions of dollars in total overall and it affects more than 41 million people all over the world. Every year, the medical industry tries to create new treatment options, as well as cures, and inventions, but have failed to create a clear solution to this problem.
Now, Harvard University researchers along with other participating institutions were able to invent a robot that is wrapped around your heart so it keeps pumping blood. This research was done in response to the different drawbacks of traditional ventricular assist devices (VADs). VADs remove blood from the heart before pumping it back into the aorta or pulmonary artery. The problem with this is that these artificial devices are in direct contact with the blood which in turn increases the risk of blood clots.
Ellen Roche, a Harvard graduate and her advisor Conor Walsh, has decided to make a similar device, but never comes in contact with the blood. The researchers made use of soft robotics, contraptions that are made of flexible materials to work with the complex rhythms of the heart. This silicon device is a sleeve which contains actuators that contract when it is filled with pressurized air.
Source: New Atlas
When this new device is placed around a heart, the contractions can be used to keep the heart continuously pumping. The movement of the device can also be controlled by adjusting the airflow. According to IEEE Spectrum, Roche said, “Even as a patient’s disease condition changes, you could modify the level of assistance provided by the sleeve,”. Their work has been published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
The research team then tested their invention on pig cadavers, a synthetic heart, as well as a live pig with a failing heart. The researchers found out that when the device was connected to the live pig, the device was able to restore blood flow back to baseline. This device will need more animal tests, and the team hopes to conduct a longer-term study on human participants at some point in the future. In addition to this, the researchers also plan to research how they will be able to reduce inflammation on the surface of the heart.
If this new device will be successful, it will be able to save millions of lives.
Article Source:
IEEE
Futurism
