Robot hearts: medicine ’s new frontier
From bovine valves to electrical motors and 3-D printed hearts, cardiologists are forging ahead with technologies once dismissed as “crazy ideas”On a cold, bright January morning I walked south across Westminster Bridge to St Thomas ’ Hospital, an institution with a proud tradition of innovation: I was there to observe a procedure generally regarded as the greatest advance in cardiac surgery since the turn of the millennium – and one that can be performed without a surgeon.The patient was a man in his 80s with aortic stenosis, a narrowed valve which was restricting outflow from the left ventricle into the aorta. His heart struggled to pump sufficient blood through the reduced aperture, and the muscle of the affected ventricle had thickened as the organ tried to compensate. If left unchecked, this would eventually lead to heart failure. For a healthier patient the solution would be simple: an operation to remove the diseased valve and replace it with a prosthesis. But the man ’s age and a long list of other medical conditions made open-heart surgery out of the question. Happily, for the last few years, another option has been available for such high-risk patients: transcatheter aortic valve implantation, known as TAVI for short.Continue reading...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Thomas Morris Tags: Science Health Society Heart attack Technology Engineering Source Type: news
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