Patching the heart with sheets of patients’ own cells might improve symptoms in some cases of severe heart failure, an early study suggests.
Japanese researchers harvested tissue from patients’ thigh muscles to grow sheets of cells that were then affixed to patients’ hearts during surgery.
The main point of the study was to evaluate the safety and feasibility of the procedure. But the research team also found that a year after the surgery, some patients had improvements in their exercise capacity and heart function.
