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Engineer Designs His Own Heart Valve Implant
nametaken writes "In 2000, Tal Golesworthy, a British engineer, was told that he suffers from Marfan syndrome, a disorder of the connective tissue that often causes rupturing of the aorta. The only solution then available was the pairing of a mechanical valve and a highly risky blood thinner. To an engineer like Golesworthy, that just wasn't good enough. So he constructed his own implant that does the job better than the existing solution--and became the first patient to try it."
here
Slashdot ya no es que lo era!
Fuck POPSCI, here's the link to the original article (Warning: graphic photographs)
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
I knew a conceptual artist who tried the same thing.
I miss him.
Yeah, it's nice when you can really put your heart into something.
As an engineer by training, I find this to be very cool.
I myself suffer from a physical... ahem.. shortcoming.
So, just like this engineer, I designed and constructed a solution using a banana and some duct tape.
My wife loves it!
After reading this article, I am thinking I will go ahead and publicize my invention.
Another yay for engineers!
There's no need - and hasn't been for a long time, at least 15-20 years - to put in a mechanical valve just for aortic valve disease. There are cadaveric (organ-donor) valves and porcine (pig-heart) valves available. They don't last as long as the mechanical ones, but they don't need anticoagulation. Given that he had Marfan syndrome, however, it's quite likely that the problem was a valve-and-aortic-root problem, just like the Bentall procedure I did the anesthesia for today, which does better with a mechanical valve. His solution is impressive: no quibbles on that here. Imaging a heart to get dimensions is hideously difficult. Getting a 3D model of the aorta is some fine engineering in itself.
However, he has mostly transferred the problem downstream - the root of the aorta is the most elastic part of a very elastic vessel, and transmitting the higher pressure downstream (which his aorta-corset will do) will lead to increased ballooning of the segment closest to the heart. The hard part is to make sure that that segment can handle it for the remainder of his expected lifespan.
I have had 3 aortic valves implanted throughout my lifetime. Starting at the age of 2. I've also survived a Konno procedure and aortic stem reformation the last time around.
First of all, Warfarin is pretty fucking safe. If I take an extra 5mg pill once a week, nothing happens. Out of all the thinners, it's not exactly aspirin mild, but it's not horrendously dangerous. Like all drugs, bodies react differently and while I'm ridiculously allergic to tetracycline, I'm middle of the road for reactions to warfarin (over 30 years of it). It's always shock and awe so a news story can give infotainment. Within my lifetime thinners have gained a lot of traction (due to aging boomers). Look up replacements for warfarin. It's big money and the idea that I'll be on warfarin for the rest of my life is unrealistic. Yes I'll be on something, but that's par for a mechanical valve.
The prosthetic design he came up with, is for his specific problem, weak aortic tissue which involves the stem. As mentioned in the article, a prosthetic aorta isn't a new idea. I'm not exactly sure it's any better an idea than it used to be, nor is anyone else, with a sample size of 30ish. The meat of the story is how the prosthetic is customized. Scan, 3d model, manufacture, affordably. That is pretty radical, from the perspective of current internal medicine. This whole thing sounds like a medical device ad. What I'm more interested in, aortic valves and thinners, they demonize or don't talk about at all. Pity.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Living tissue (like a vein) is the most infection-resistant substrate. Infection is a major worry when using artificial graft material, because there isn't and won't be any blood supply to the graft. Synthetic grafts would be grossly inferior to venous grafts, which themselves are poor substitutes for arterial grafts (but there are remarkably few redundant arteries, so the question is generally moot).
Okay, I'm a big fan of good engineering and all, but you gotta have some SERIOUSLY heavy-metal nards to be the first guy on the table for your own device for something like this!
Talk about putting your money where your mouth is!
Kudos and major man points!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
the root of the aorta is the most elastic part of a very elastic vessel, and transmitting the higher pressure downstream (which his aorta-corset will do)
I'm not a medic but I am a physicist and what you say does not make sense from a physics point of view. If you take a bulge in a pipe containing a flowing liquid and squeeze it back down to the diameter of the rest of the pipe you do not increase the pressure lower down. In fact, if anything, you will reduce it because the narrower pipe will have a larger pressure drop along it due to viscous flow.
This is not the same as squeezing a closed, static system, like a balloon where squeezing it at one point reduces the volume considerable which does increase the pressure causing the unrestricted part to bulge. Yes, technically there is a volume change by restricting the aorta but surely this is only a small fraction of the total circulatory system and even then wouldn't this just cause the body to eventually reduce the amount of blood in circulation by that amount?
So unless, I have over simplified something (not taking account of the pulsed flow for example), I don't see from a purely physics perspective how it would make the pressure lower down any higher and so make the situation worse. There may be medical reasons for for increased concern but not the pressure reason you state above.
It's a perineum gangrene (pubic area) acording to the internet. Grangrenes are painful rotting of living tissue and require amputation lest you get infected from the necrotic tissue; I suppose its picture has lots of black tissue where you expect skin colors, pus, gore, lots of rotting and hanging skin, and unkempt pubic hairs, and badly decayed sexual organs; male and female.
We see tons of hearts on TV, and they're beating --not rotting-- while being operating on, unhealthy as they may be at the moment. No, there's no need to see a picture of your proposed comparison to sober up. But thanks for letting us inspect how bad things can get.
Just a few comments, and all the negative comments already: big deal, there is nothing new here.
You know what, when I hear news like that, it really gives me more confidence in technical people (engineers, scientists, geeks, etc). The guy got a heart problem, he got the skills (with the help of doctors and others, probably) to design the best solution for himself, and in the meantime, for other people too. And guess what, he even got the ball to install it on himself first. And it seems to work just fine. What can be more cool, more geeky, more nerdy than that? Sure, it's only "a small sample of 30ish", as someone said here. So what? Even if this solution only applies to one person, it is still a fucking cool solution.
For me, I'd like to hear news like that everyday, that's news for nerds, stuff that matters. If I had kids, I would tell them this, and other similar stories, as bed-time stories everyday.