Researchers from Boston Children’s Hospital, the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and the Karp Lab at Brigham and Women’s Hospital have jointly designed a specialized catheter for fixing holes in the heart using a biodegradable adhesive and patch. As the team reports in “Science Translational Medicine,” the catheter has been used successfully in animal studies to facilitate hole closure without the need for open heart surgery.
Pedro delNido, MD, chief of cardiac surgery at Boston Children’s and contributing author on the study, says the device represents a radical change in the way these kinds of cardiac defects are repaired. “In addition to avoiding open heart surgery, this method avoids suturing into the heart tissue, because we’re just gluing something to it.”
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