Medical implants can save lives by correcting structural defects in the heart or other organs. But until now, their uses in children have been complicated by the fact that fixed-size implants cannot grow with the child. They then have to undergo additional surgeries during their childhood to repair or replace implants that fail to keep up with the growth of the body and start to leak, especially for heart valves.
To meet this unmet surgical need, a team of researchers from Boston Children’s Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital (USA) has developed a growth-friendly implant designed for cardiac surgery that repairs mitral and tricuspid valves. of the heart. The results of their study appeared in Nature Biomedical Engineering.
A two-part implant
Inspired by the Chinese finger trap, a braided straw tube, the implant has two components: a core made of degradable biopolymers and a braided tubular sleeve that elongates over time in response to tensile forces exerted by the tissues growing surroundings. The core, made from polymer already existing in the human body, begins to degrade after implantation. “By adjusting the composition of the polymer, we can tune the core to predictably degrade over a predetermined period of time,” explains in the article Jeffrey M.Karp, lead author of the study.
Bio mimicry?
The exclusive braided sleeve design not only looks like a Chinese finger trap, but is also an imitation of what nature is already making. They were inspired by the octopus which has the ability to stretch its arms in cracks between the rocks in search of its prey. It is thanks to the crossed fibers present around these cells that it can lengthen or narrow the diameter of its arms to extend them two to three times farther than their original length. This type of elongation movement is also found in the natural tissue structure of the intestines and esophagus of mammals.
Beyond heart repair, the research team claims that the implant design that adapts to the patient’s growth could be applied to other organs in the body as well!
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