Nearly 700,000 people die each year in the United States from heart disease, and one-third of those deaths are due to complications in the first weeks or months after a heart-related trauma.
To prevent these deaths, researchers at Northwestern University and George Washington (GW) University are monitoring and treating heart disease and dysfunction in the days, weeks, and months after these fatal events. We have developed a new device for this purpose. Additionally, once the device is no longer needed, it dissolves harmlessly in the body, eliminating the need for extraction.
This soft, flexible device, about the size of a postage stamp, uses a series of sensors and actuators to perform more complex investigations than traditional devices such as pacemakers can perform. Not only can the device be placed in different parts of the heart, but it also continuously streams information to doctors, allowing them to remotely monitor a 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 study was published July 5 in the journal Science Advances.
“Several serious complications, such as atrial fibrillation and heart block, can occur after cardiac surgery or catheter-based therapy,” said Northwestern University experimental cardiologist who co-led the study. Igor Efimov said. “Current post-surgical monitoring and treatment of these complications requires more advanced technology than is currently available. We hope that our new device can fill this technology gap. Our temporary electronic device can map electrical activity from different locations in the atrium and deliver electrical stimulation from different locations to stop atrial fibrillation as soon as it starts.”
“Many of the deaths that occur after heart surgery or heart attacks are caused by the need for doctors to have better tools to monitor and treat patients during the delicate weeks and months after these events occur. GW’s Luyao Lu, who co-led the study, added: Efimov. “The tools developed in our research have great potential to address unmet needs in many basic and translational cardiac research programs.”
Efimov is a professor of biomedical engineering in Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and a professor of medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Lu is an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at GW University.
