Ad: Manage updates with the Download App
  • CNET
  • All arteries posts

arteries

FDA clears robotic device to assist cardiologists

Radiation exposure is an occupational hazard for cardiologists performing a procedure called percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI -- better known as angioplasty), which helps restore blood flow to blocked arteries in patients with coronary artery disease. Lead aprons help, but they're not perfect, and they're heavy enough to take a toll.

Now a new system that employs robot-assisted stent and balloon placements to restore blood flow has received FDA clearance this week. Called CorPath 200, it allows cardiologists to work from inside a lead-lined cockpit, not only minimizing their radiation exposure but also improving their view of the angiography … Read more

Dude, your veins are off the shelf!

Not long after creating a functioning rat lung in her lab, Yale University Professor of Anesthesiology and Biomedical Engineering Laura Niklason is testing bioengineered human veins that could benefit some 500,000 patients a year who need to undergo vascular surgeries such as coronary artery bypass.

The tissue-engineered vascular grafts (TEVGs) were generated in a bioreactor using a relatively new tissue engineering method called decellularization--a process by which researchers remove a tissue's individual cells while leaving its structure intact. The veins are off the shelf and available at the time of surgery, and are said to be less likely to result in obstruction, clotting, or infection.

The findings, published this week in the journal Science Translational Medicine by researchers from East Carolina University, Duke, Yale, and Niklason's company Humacyte, suggest the veins could work in both large- and small-diameter applications (6mm and 3mm), be stored up to 12 months in refrigerated conditions, and provide unobstructed blood flow in large animal models for up to a year.… Read more