Researchers at Northwestern University and George Washington University have created a new device that could monitor and treat heart disease and dysfunction in the days, weeks or months after such events to help prevent such deaths
Post Date – Monday 23rd – 2:35pm
Washington: Of the nearly 700,000 deaths from heart disease in the United States each year, one-third occur as complications within the first weeks or months after a catastrophic heart-related event.
Researchers at Northwestern University and George Washington University have developed a novel device that could monitor and treat heart disease and dysfunction in the days, weeks or months after such events to help prevent such deaths . When the device is no longer needed, it degrades harmlessly in the body, eliminating the need for extraction.
About the size of a postage stamp, the soft, flexible device uses an array of sensors and actuators to perform more complex research than traditional devices such as pacemakers. Not only can the device be placed in various parts of the heart, but it can also continuously transmit information to doctors so they can remotely monitor the patient’s heart in real time. The device is also highly transparent, allowing doctors to view specific areas of the heart to make a diagnosis or provide treatment.
The research will be published in the journal Science Advances.
“There are some serious complications that can occur after heart surgery or catheterization, including atrial fibrillation and heart block,” said Igor Efimov, an experimental cardiologist at Northwestern University and co-leader of the study. Efimov) said. “Currently postoperative monitoring and treatment of these complications requires more sophisticated technology than is currently available. We hope our new device will close this technology gap. Our transient electronics can map electrical activity at multiple locations in the atrium , and then deliver electrical stimulation from multiple locations to stop atrial fibrillation as soon as it starts.” “If physicians have better tools to monitor and treat patients in the delicate weeks and months after these events, then Many deaths that occur after cardiac surgery or heart attack are preventable,” added GW’s Luyao Lu, who co-led the work. Yefimov. “The tools developed in our work have enormous potential to address unmet needs in many basic and translational heart research programs.” Efimov is professor of biomedical engineering at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and Northwestern’s Feinberg Professor of Medicine at the Georgian College of Medicine. Lu is an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at George Washington University.
The work builds on Efimov’s previous work developing cardiac implants to monitor and temporarily regulate heart speed. In 2021, Efimov and Northwestern professor John A. Rogers unveiled the first-ever transient pacemaker, published in Nature Biomedical Engineering. Then, earlier this year, Efimov’s team unveiled a graphene “tattoo” for the treatment of cardiac arrhythmias, published in Advanced Materials.
“After heart surgery, surgeons sometimes insert temporary wires that connect to an external current generator to provide electrical stimulation during temporary heart block induced by the surgery,” Efimov said. “Recently, we developed a bioabsorbable pacemaker to replace this lead. Postoperative atrial fibrillation requires more sophisticated methods based on multielectrode arrays to sense and stop atrial fibrillation. Now, we propose a new technology to make this happen.” The new device, tested in small animal models, offers capabilities beyond traditional pacemakers. While pacemakers only provide an overall picture of the heart (whether it’s beating or not), transient devices can provide a more detailed picture. Not only can it restore a normal heart rhythm, but it can also show which areas of the heart are functioning well and which are not. The transparent nature of the device also allows researchers to optically map many important physical parameters of the heart through the device to better study heart function and heart disease mechanisms.
After a clinically relevant period of time, the device (made of FDA-approved biocompatible materials) simply dissolves into a benign product. Similar to absorbable sutures, the device degrades through the body’s natural biological processes and disappears completely. The bioabsorbable nature of the device can avoid complications caused by surgical tooth extraction and reduce the risk of infection, thereby reducing medical costs and improving patient outcomes.
The research, “Soft, bioabsorbable, transparent microelectrode arrays for multimodal spatiotemporal mapping and modulation of cardiac physiology,” was supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.
