Nanometric Heart-wrapping Therapy Promising

Chinese medical experts plan to use nanometric technology to maximize the effect of their newly- explored surgical operation against cardiac disease.

According to Wang Tianyou, an expert on cardiac surgery at Beijing Friendship Hospital, the up-to-date weapon against heart failure is a netlike artificial material made of polyester.

"Once wrapped in the cover, failing hearts will be kept from swelling excessively. The resulting proper compression will help hearts beat well," Wang said.

He said that a group is researching ways to add nanometric corpuscles to the cover, and if it works, the reticulation's intensity and tenacity will multiply, explained Wang.

Having proved to be a complete success through animal experiments, the artificial heart-wrapping therapy -- scientifically termed Dynamic Cardiomyoplagy -- will soon be put for clinical trials.

Cardiac failure, especially at the terminal stages, has long been a concern for global medical experts. Patients suffering from this symptom usually die soon afterwards.

To survive, they may have to keep taking medication to temporarily ward off constant heart arrest or accept the traditional heart-wrapping therapy, which is more expensive, more painful and more effective.

Traditional heart-wrapping therapy requires an implanted pacemaker and the tortuous transplanting of healthy muscle from other body parts to the surface of failing hearts.

Considering the expense and the necessity for using body muscle as auxiliary material, fewer than 1,000 patients were able to afford this therapy worldwide. In China, as such an operation costs about 200,000 yuan (24,000 U.S. dollars), the number is only three so far.

To enable more cardiac patients to become beneficiaries of this surgical treatment, experts are exploring new and more efficient artificial materials to substitute body muscle.

Currently, the two-to-three-millimeter-thick resilient cover developed by Chinese medical experts is made of raw material specially used for medical prosthesis.

With operation procedures simplified and pacemakers no longer necessary, Wang said, it is possible that the operation would cost only half the current sum.

Ma Zhilong, an expert on nanometric materials at Qinghua University, pointed out that medical materials made through nanometric technology are ideal supplementary materials for medical embedment.

"They are corrosion-proof, free of toxins and side effects, of a relatively long working life and have high compatibility with blood and viscera," he said.






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