Amongst the latest in nanotechnology innovations is the revolutionary spaghetti like artificial artery that is claimed to reduce the risk of heart attacks during a bypass surgery. Developed by British scientists at the University College of London, this artificial artery will circumvent the need to surgically graft the patient’s own vein during bypass.
During a bypass, a blood vein is needed to divert blood around narrow and clogged blood vessels. Such a healthy blood vessel is absent in many patients requiring bypass, thus increasing their chances of a heart attack during the surgery itself. Professor Alexander Seifalian, who led the team of scientists creating this new vessel said, “Almost 30 percent of heart bypass patients do not have a vein usable for bypass. In these cases, there’s not much doctors can do and patients often die.”
The new ‘spaghetti’ artery promises to replace plastic arteries currently used for grafting. These plastic arteries have a high chance of forming clots and limited flexibility causing lack of synchrony in pulsing along with the heart. The new artery offers another benefit of avoiding a second surgery done to obtain a vein during bypass.
The new artery has been developed using nanotechnology and polymer material and has a coating of millions of tiny spikes, each one of which is thousands of times smaller than the size of a human hair. These spikes magnetize stem cells or master cells from blood, form a coating on the inside of the artery and finally turn them into endothelial cells- healthy lining of cells found in living blood vessels.
Human trials of this clot-busting artery are to begin in 2010 with a grant of more than $800,000 given to researchers by the British Wellcome Trust. “We welcome this interesting development, which could potentially be of enormous benefits to patients who need a bypass operation to treat their coronary heart disease,” said Judy O’Sullivan of the British Heart Foundation.