Pacemakers That Don’t Need Batteries
Almost anything that runs on batteries eventually need new ones and pacemakers are no exception. The average pacemaker can go 5 to 10 years before the batteries need to be replaced. While the procedure isn’t open heart surgery, it’s also not entirely comfortable either.
Having an option that doesn’t require a foreign medical device to be implanted and no need for maintenance would be a dream for heart disease patients with irregular heartbeats (arrhythmia) especially children who can outgrow pacemakers quickly. Researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston have found a way to engineer skeletal muscle cells so that they can be integrated into a person’s heart and transmit a natural electrical signal.
Cowen and team took skeletal muscle cells from rats and transferred them to a specially designed collagen scaffold. When in the scaffold, the cells align themselves into a conduit and express a protein that creates small pores between the cells, allowing them to transmit electrical signals.
Earlier this month, I mentioned growing tissue engineered hearts*. This biological pacemaker research is also still at very early stages but the dream is still alive.
MIT Technology Review, June 20, 2006
*As featured in this week’s issue of Tangled Bank.
Technorati Tags: pacemakers, arrhythmia, irregular heart rhythm, heartbeat, heart, heart disease, cardiovascular disease, cvd, tissue engineering
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POSTED IN: Hearty Research
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