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  • During a heart attack, some obstruction is restrictingor sometimes even completely

  • cutting offblood flow to the heart.

  • This deprives the heart of oxygen and nutrients, and without those, your heart can’t beat

  • properly and can become seriously damaged.

  • Now, if youre lucky, you get to the doctor on time and receive the proper medical attention.

  • But even if you survive your heart attack, that part of your heart is still permanently

  • damaged, and the medical community has struggled with how to support damaged hearts.

  • But several new technologies, like growing stem cells to form a regenerative heart patch,

  • are being developed to give damaged hearts the support they need to recover and function

  • properly after a major destructive event like a heart attack.

  • And this technology is not the only one trying to repair heart damage.

  • Healing the heart after a heart attack is hard for many reasons, but one of those is

  • that the heart has to keep pumping blood.

  • So it has to keep expanding and contracting, not giving the damaged parts a chance to heal,

  • constantly deforming the parts that are compromised, forming thicker and thicker scar tissue that

  • keeps your heart from moving properly.

  • But you can’t just tell your heart to stay still for a while and let it recover, obviously,

  • so youve gotta come up with something else.

  • Enter one technology: an acellular viscoelastic adhesive epicardial patchbasically a bandaid

  • for your heart!

  • There have been several kinds proposed and tested, but this one has been computationally

  • optimizedand let me explain what that means.

  • This technology, coming out of a research collaboration between multiple universities

  • around the world, is the result of a specific computer model of the heart.

  • They modeled the heart’s normal function, the heart after a heart attack, and then the

  • heart after a heart attack with different kinds of patches so they could see what size

  • and thickness would work best to support the organ structurally as it beatsthe patch

  • expanding and contracting with the heart.

  • Other patch technologies have not had their shape, size, thickness, and stiffness optimized

  • to move with the heart as it moves, which has been a barrier to the usefulness of this

  • technology.

  • This particular patch is made of a hydrogel, a biocompatible, highly breathable plasticactually,

  • the same kind of material that contact lenses are made ofand theviscoelastic

  • part of its name means that it behaves as both a fluid and a solid, providing both expandable

  • flexibility and solid support at different points in the heart’s movement range.

  • This particular solution is very promising, with animal testing revealing that the patch

  • improves the amount of blood that damaged hearts can pump and reduces the strain on

  • damaged parts of the heart.

  • But it’s only one of many options being explored at the moment.

  • Another team out of Imperial College London had created a living patch of cells that could

  • be grafted onto a damaged heart to not only support it as it recovers but potentially

  • even help the heart regenerate healthy tissue.

  • They grow stem cells into full-fledged patches of living muscle, about 2 by 3 centimeters

  • large, that move and contract on their own, and the researchers hope the patch could eventually

  • electrically and mechanically become a part of your heart, as opposed to just a surface

  • bandaid.

  • Stem cells have been used as a possible heart repair mechanism before, but they were previously

  • injected directly into the heart, which didn’t give them much of a chance to actually repair

  • any tissue before the heart cleared them out.

  • The advantage of introducing them in a patch is that they have a cellular scaffold that

  • keeps them in place long enough to do their job and try to make your heart healthy again.

  • Duke University is pursuing a similar stem cell route and creating reparative heart patches

  • out of stem cells to reverse the damage done to hearts during heart attacks, so the world

  • is really invested in solving this problem.

  • Cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of death in the world.

  • And a significant percentage of that heart failure is because people are surviving heart

  • attacks, but their hearts never recover, and can’t continue to pump blood properly.

  • So advancements in healing bandages for damaged and dying hearts could drastically improve

  • outcomes for those affected by heart disease.

  • If you want even more on how machines are improving our health in surprising ways, check

  • out this video over here on this 3D printed lung.

  • Always make sure you come back to Seeker for your medical innovation news, and as always,

  • thanks for watching.

During a heart attack, some obstruction is restrictingor sometimes even completely

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