Breakthroughs in durable mechanical circulatory support (MCS) devices add years to lives and life to years for heart failure patients
2024-04-10
(Press-News.org)
Embargoed until 10:00 a.m. Wednesday, 10 April, 2024 Central European Summer Time (GMT +2)
10 April, 2024, Prague, Czech Republic—The same technology that enables a bullet train to travel at speeds up to 200 mph without touching its rails now keeps a failing heart pumping—and in the near future, it will do so via a wireless power connection. Mandeep R. Mehra, MD, FRCP described the cutting-edge heart pump and other advances in mechanical circulatory support (MCS) today at the Annual Meeting and Scientific Sessions of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation (ISHLT) in Prague.
“It’s been very difficult to realize gains over the last 30 years in the field of mechanical circulatory support,” said Dr. Mehra, executive director of the Center for Advanced Heart Disease at Brigham Health in Boston. “But we’re now at a point where surgically implanted devices have moved from rescuing patients on the brink of death to providing long-term therapy, prolonged survival, and functional capacity.”
MCS devices are temporarily or permanently implanted in patients with advanced heart failure to keep the heart pumping enough blood. Dr. Mehra likened the generational shifts in MCS devices to the evolution of automobile technology.
“I think we've come from the Model T Ford to a Mercedes Benz or BMW,” he said. “Now we need to move to the Porsche and Ferrari.”
Early MCS devices mimicked human heart function. Large, bulky, and heavy, they had multiple moving parts that could fail. The next generation of devices, small non-pulsatile continuous-flow pumps, are smaller but come with a risk of bleeding from mucosal sites such as the intestines.
“These devices need a power line that exits through the patient’s abdomen and connects to external batteries,” he said. “So while patients with this pump live longer and have greater functional capacity, they are tethered to a battery.”
The latest development in MCS devices, the magnetically levitated centrifugal-flow pump, prevents clotting and reduces bleeding and other complications inherent in earlier devices. It features a motor and a rotating disk that is completely suspended in a magnetic field, operating under the same ‘maglev’ principle used in high-speed trains. With no mechanical bearings and wider passages for blood flow, the frictionless pump creates an artificial pulse by rapidly changing rotor speed.
Dr. Mehra said patients with left ventricular assisted devices (LVADs) engineered with the technology now live beyond five years, a survival rate which rivals that of many heart transplant patients.
“At this point in time, MCS devices are much more forgiving,” he said. “But we need to move to an era where they become forgettable.”
The cutting-edge maglev heart pump has been implanted in well over 10,000 patients, but Dr. Mehra said that number could increase ten-fold with additional advancements, including further miniaturization and fewer peripheral components.
“In the next five years, new pumps will have a fully internalized power line and be wirelessly powered from outside the body, just like our iPhones,” he said. “We’ll implant these devices, and the patient will be able to forget about them.”
In his presentation, Dr. Mehra also reported on other advances revolutionizing the field, including xenotransplants and bacteriostatic, biocompatible surfaces that minimize infections.
“We have the potential to serve many more heart failure patients, adding years to their lives and, importantly, life to their years,” he said. “The scalable impact is huge, and we’re just scratching the surface now. In the next five to seven years, unnecessary patient deaths will be a thing of the past.”
END
The following relevant financial relationships exist related to this presentation. Dr. Mehra reports consulting fees derived from Abbott (paid to his institution, Trial leadership), Natera (Steering Committee), Paragonix (consulting), Moderna (CEC), NupulseCV (Scientific Board), Fineheart (Scientific Board), Transmedics (Scientific Board), Leviticus (Scientific Board), Cadrenal (Trial Leadership), Second Heart Assist (Trial Leadership). Dr. Mehra will discuss off label use and/or investigational use of the HeartMate 3 LVAD.
About ISHLT
The International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation (ISHLT) is a not-for-profit, multidisciplinary, professional organization dedicated to improving the care of patients with advanced heart or lung disease through transplantation, mechanical support, and innovative therapies via research, education, and advocacy. ISHLT members focus on transplantation and a range of interventions and therapies related to advanced heart and lung disease.
The ISHLT Annual Meeting and Scientific Sessions will be held 10-13 April at the Prague Congress Centre in Prague, Czech Republic.
Contact:
Jess Burke, CAE
ISHLT Director of Marketing and Communications
+1.312.224.0015
END
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2024-04-10
Embargoed until 10:00 a.m., Wednesday, 10 April, 2024 Central European Summer Time (GMT +2)
10 April 2024, Prague, Czech Republic—Artificial intelligence will significantly impact the heart transplantation process by helping physicians better assess the complex factors impacting patient outcomes, according to researchers at today’s Annual Meeting and Scientific Sessions of the International Society of Heart and Lung Transplantation (ISHLT) in Prague.
“Until now, we’ve assessed the likelihood of transplant success based on individual risk factors,” said Eileen Hsich, medical director of the Heart Transplant Program at the Cleveland ...
2024-04-10
Sunlight has a major influence on chemical processes. Its high-energy UV radiation in particular is strongly absorbed by all materials and triggers photochemical reactions of the substances present in the air. A well-known example is the formation of ground-level ozone when UV light hits nitrogen oxides. A research team led by Birgitta Schultze-Bernhardt from the Institute of Experimental Physics at Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) is now utilising this high reaction potential for a new method of environmental monitoring. ...
2024-04-10
Embargoed until 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, 10 April, 2024, Central European Summer Time
10 April, 2024, Prague, Czech Republic—Amid the persistent threat of missiles from the air and an array of hazardous terrestrial obstacles, the Heart Institute of the Ministry of Health in Kyiv has continued to provide heart transplants to Ukraine’s citizens, performing 40 of the life-saving procedures since Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country in 2022. The Heart Institute’s Director Borys Todurov, MD, PhD, reported on his team’s extraordinary efforts today at the Annual Meeting and Scientific Sessions of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation ...
2024-04-10
Investigators have applied artificial intelligence techniques to gait analyses and medical records data to provide insights about individuals with leg fractures and aspects of their recovery.
The study, which is published in the Journal of Orthopaedic Research, uncovered a significant association between the rates of hospital readmission after fracture surgery and the presence of underlying medical conditions. Correlations were also found between underlying medical conditions and orthopedic complications, although these links were not significant.
It was also ...
2024-04-10
Previous studies have questioned whether gut microbe imbalances and vitamin D deficiency may be linked to schizophrenia. New research published in Neuropsychopharmacology Reports now indicates that taking probiotics plus vitamin D supplements may improve cognitive function in individuals with the disease.
For the study, 70 adults with schizophrenia were randomized to take a placebo or probiotic supplements plus 400 IU vitamin D daily for 12 weeks. Severity of the disease and cognitive function were evaluated by tests called the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) and the 30-point Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), respectively.
A total of 69 patients completed the study. The MoCA ...
2024-04-10
Chronic infection with the hepatitis B virus (HBV) causes progressive liver problems, and eradication of the virus remains a formidable challenge. New research in FEBS Letters indicates that treatment that boosts the effects of immune cells called stem cell memory T cells (TSCMs) may be a promising strategy for combating HBV.
In the study, investigators identified TSCMs in patients with chronic HBV infection and analyzed their effects in a mouse model of HBV. After introducing TSCMs from patients ...
2024-04-10
CLEVELAND, Ohio (April 10, 2024)—After the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) in 2002, many women have resisted taking hormone therapy (HT), especially after age 65 years, because of fears of increased risks for various cancers and heart disease. A new study shows that those fears may be unfounded, depending on the type, route, and dose of HT. Results of the study are published online today in Menopause, the journal of The Menopause Society.
Despite the conflicting results of a follow-up WHI study in 2004 and dozens of other studies since that time, a percentage of healthcare professionals and their middle-aged female patients continue to believe that ...
2024-04-10
Adolescence is an important period of life for healthy growth. Malnutrition during this seminal period may have long-term adverse effects on health and development. In sub-Saharan Africa, there is a lack of nutrition programming for adolescents. Adolescent malnutrition represents an urgent issue in sub-Saharan Africa, which has a long history of undernutrition and a rising issue of overweight and obesity.
Findings from a new study suggest that a four-component school-based nutritional intervention package improved ...
2024-04-10
Compared with Cd-based QDs, InP-based QDs have lower photoluminescence quantum yields (PL QYs) and broader full-width at half-maximum (FWHM). In particular, bare InP core has extremely low PL QY (＜1%) due to the ease of oxidation of their highly reactive surface even in insert reaction chambers. It has been reported that the defects from oxidative species are probably the reasons for the non-radiative recombination and poor PL QY of these materials. Over the last decade, extensive studies have been conducted to improve the optoelectronic properties of InP-based QDs for display and lighting applications, ...
2024-04-10
Undertaking the majority of daily physical activity in the evening is linked to the greatest health benefits for people living with obesity, according to researchers from the University of Sydney, Australia who followed the trajectory of 30,000 people over almost 8 years.
Using wearable device data to categorise participant’s physical activity by morning, afternoon or evening, the researchers uncovered that those who did the majority of their aerobic moderate to vigorous physical activity– the kind that raises our heartrate and gets us out of breath– between 6pm and midnight had the lowest risk of premature ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Breakthroughs in durable mechanical circulatory support (MCS) devices add years to lives and life to years for heart failure patients
