An Irish scientist has played a leading role in developing a "soft robot" that can mimic cardiac muscles, it was announced last night.
The device could represent an improvement on ventricular assist devices – and has been developed by researchers from Ireland, the USA, the UK and Germany.
The device is a sleeve wrapped around the heart and filled with pressurised air that can twist and compress in synch with the beating heart.
It has so far been tested on pig organs and restored blood flow after acute cardiac arrest in six animals, researchers reported in Science Translational Medicine.
The researchers say their aim was to develop a device that does not come into contact with blood – and minimises the risk of blood clotting.
It has to be tethered to an external air pump.
Developer Dr Ellen Roche, now of the University of Galway, Ireland, said: "Soft robotic devices are ideally suited to interact with soft tissue and give assistance that can help with augmentation of function, and potentially even healing and recovery."
Fellow researcher Conor Walsh, of the Wyss Institute at Harvard University, Massachusetts, USA, said: "This work represents an exciting proof of concept result for this soft robot, demonstrating that it can safely interact with soft tissue and lead to improvements in cardiac function.
"We envision many other future applications where such devices can delivery mechanotherapy both inside and outside of the body."
Frank Pigula, a US cardiothoracic surgeon involved in the research, said: "The cardiac field had turned away from idea of developing heart compression instead of blood-pumping ventricular assisted devices due to technological limitations, but now with advancements in soft robotics it’s time to turn back."
Soft robotic sleeve supports heart function Science Translational Medicine 18 January 2017 [abstract]
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