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Mending Hearts With Light-Activated Glue

Posted by Soulskill on from the only-if-you're-out-of-duct-tape dept.

the_newsbeagle writes "When surgeons set out to repair holes in the walls of the heart's chambers or in blood vessels, they often do invasive open-heart surgery and use sutures, staples, and glue to keep a patch in place. But the sutures and staples are a rough fix, and many of the glues on the market today don't work well on wet tissue that's continually flexed by the heart's contractions and the movement of pumping blood. Today biomaterial researchers announced a new light-activated glue that could make surgery less invasive, quicker, and easier. The adhesive was inspired by slugs' and sandcastle worms' sticky secretions, which work underwater, and it can be applied with slender tools during minimally invasive surgery. A flash of UV light then sets the glue, which bends and flexes with the tissue."

11 of 38 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Great technology by i+kan+reed · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Or maybe we shouldn't worry about people who get one small fact wrong.

    Religion is just one of many many many ways to be wrong about the world, and getting upset that someone dares to make a mistake just seems silly.

  2. Reminds me of some dental technology by cold+fjord · · Score: 4, Informative

    Light-activated resin

    --
    much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
  3. Finally getting laid? by bob_super · · Score: 4, Funny

    "I'm the world's leading researcher in the field of slugs' and sandcastle worms' "
    just got replaced by:
    "My research is used by heart surgeons to save lives and ease recovery"

    Yep, someone's life just got a lot easier at parties...

    1. Re:Finally getting laid? by Krishnoid · · Score: 2

      Or even better, "I'm scientifically helping people mend their broken hearts."

    2. Re:Finally getting laid? by Anubis+IV · · Score: 2

      "Oh, cool. So, what does that mean in English?"

      That's the answer you'll get from a surprisingly large number of people if you're involved in research and try to dazzle them with technical jargon, thus defeating the whole purpose of trying to use that jargon in the first place. People generally aren't afraid to admit that they don't know something that they really have no reason to know. It's only when they feel like they should know something that they become self-conscious about not knowing it.

      Besides which, every researcher secretly (or sometimes not-so-secretly) craves opportunities to talk about what they do, so the last thing they want to do is scare people away with terminology. The real trick is to figure out how to make what you do interesting, which is possible with pretty much any topic, but takes more work with some than others. When I was in grad school, I didn't tell people I was "conducting an analysis on the performance of massively parallelized, homogeneous, distributed web crawling systems with the intent of reducing the frequency at which undesirable resource allocations occurred". That's a quick way to end up right back where we started at the top of this comment, or else end the conversation with the other person unimpressed and thinking you're an unapproachable nerd. Instead, I explained things plainly and tied it back to stuff they knew. Once people realized they could actually understand what I was talking about and that I was capable of pulling back the curtain a bit on stuff they used every day like Google search, they'd usually pepper me with all sorts of additional questions, which I was then able to tie back to various parts of my research.

      For these guys, they're not studying "slugs", "polymers", or "Phragmatopoma californica". What they're doing is "finding ways to adapt the materials we see in nature for everyday use". Or maybe they're "looking to nature for a material that can be used to help people heal faster from surgery". And if you're approachable and start from the application before working back to the source over the course of the conversation, rather than the other way around, you're the "heart guy" or "glue guy", rather than the "slug guy".

  4. Weird science by bob_super · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Remember that one the next time some politician promises to defund some oddball research because "who cares about slugs, worms or jellyfish".

    1. Re:Weird science by interkin3tic · · Score: 2

      After Jindal mocked volcano research, then a volcano erupted, I'm guessing all politicians realized they shouldnt' do such things.

      I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry at my joke there...

    2. Re:Weird science by DoofusOfDeath · · Score: 4, Informative

      One would think, but no. The prime wrong-doer in this case is Sen. Tom Coburn, of "shrimp on treadmills" mischaracterization infamy. NPR did a story on this recently.

      It appears that Coburn knowingly omits context that would put these research projects in a much different light. Coburn is a prime example of politicians who appear to put politics above governance. He truly makes me wish there was a law which would put a bullet in any Congressman who made sophistic arguments in the course of deliberation.

  5. Don't dentists use this? by wcrowe · · Score: 4, Informative

    I cracked a tooth and got a crown a couple of years ago, and this is how the crown was attached, using a light-activated adhesive.

    --
    Proverbs 21:19
    1. Re:Don't dentists use this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      UV set resins have been around for a long time. This new one seems particularly good for adhering to flexing and wet human tissues. It's the same basic concept as the one used on your teeth but specially tailored for a different application.

  6. Cool for vessels, not so sure about ventricles by The+Grim+Reefer · · Score: 3, Informative

    When surgeons set out to repair holes in the walls of the heart's chambers or in blood vessels,

    There are already transcatheter VSD/ASD occulders that are minimally invasive (considering)and fairly well proven. They are used all the time to repair congenital defects. I am assuming that they are talking about repairing ventricular septal defects, or atrial.septal defects Since a hole in the free wall of the heart is going to kill you pretty damn fast, and will generally be caused by some type of trauma. In which case you probably have to have foreign material removed as well. I'm not as familiar with what is available for vascular repair once it's ruptured, so this sounds pretty cool. It looks like it may be more elegant than an occulder, but the images show a clamp being used. So using this, for now, means cracking the chest open. I'd say that going into the cath lab for a ASD/VSD repair is still a better option. But if they can shrink this down to the point they can fish this stuff up through the femoral artery, it will be very cool indeed.