Dissolvable Electronic Stent Can Monitor Blocked Arteries

ckwu writes: To restore blood flow in a narrowed or blocked artery, doctors can implant a metal stent to hold open the vessel. But over time, stents can cause inflammation and turbulent blood flow that lead to new blockages. Now, researchers have designed a stent carrying a suite of onboard electronic blood-flow and temperature sensors, drug delivery particles, data storage, and communication capabilities to detect and overcome these problems. The entire device is designed to dissolve as the artery heals. Medical device companies and cardiologists could look at this electronic stent as a kind of menu from which they can pick whatever components are most promising for treating certain kinds of cardiovascular disease, the researchers say.

Comments

My first thought

[viperidaenz]

My first thought is I hope the patients kidneys/liver don't have issues removing the dissolved electronic device from your blood, and the thing doesn't dislodge while still dissolving and damage a heart valve or cause some other blockage.

Re:My first thought

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. This is complete overkill for what should be a very simple device. There's absolutely no reason do make something this complicated just because you can.

Re:My first thought

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, you best hope a stent doesn't cause a clot either, or you don't react poorly to the clot medication, or get yourself hurt while on it...

One trade off versus another.

Re:My first thought

[Chewbacon]

Anti-platelet therapy is pretty effective at preventing restenosis. Risk factor modification further improves outcomes. Regardless, it beats the alternative. Look at it this way: you could die as a result of getting a stent (bare metal, drug-eluding), but you will die if you sit around and do nothing.

Re:My first thought

[mikes.song]

Why not just dissolve the original blockage? I bet there is a two dollar solution to this.

Re:My first thought

[viperidaenz]

If you read the article, there is an existing procedure that uses a dissolvable magnesium alloy mesh tube that expands to keep an artery open.

That's all good, the human body actually uses magnesium.

The additional electronics they're adding, who knows...

Re: My first thought

[Anonymous Coward]

Hence my saying, one trade-off versus another.

Re:My first thought

[tsotha]

That's not what's happening here. They have a problem in the "simple device" they're trying to deal with.

Re:My first thought

[The Grim Reefer]

Considering bio-soluble stents have been around for several years, I don't think the stent structure itself is going to be a problem. The electronics, I wouldn't know. I didn't RTFA, but perhaps they remain lodged in the plaque that caused the stenosis to begin with. As far as causing another blockage, it has been well known for some time that restenosis will occur in a standard stent. Once endothelial function becomes impaired, plaque will accumulate. Drug eluting stents can postpone this, but there is no way to avoid it permanently.

Re:My first thought

[The Grim Reefer]

Yeah, you best hope a stent doesn't cause a clot either, or you don't react poorly to the clot medication, or get yourself hurt while on it...

Restenosis is going to occur with any stent. The endothelial cells that keep plaque from accumulating are long gone by the time we can detect the issue. Until a vessel is 90% stenotic, it will effectively flow the same. You can postpone restenosis with drug eluting stents, which have been in use for a long time now. The elution distance is not very far, so this type of treatment does not cause systemic issues with blood not clotting like taking oral medications.

If the electronics in this stent can give flow information, then it also has the advantage of the patient not needing to go back into the Cath lab to have a catheter fished through their femoral artery to verify it. Which carries it's own set of risks. In the last few years, it has become possible to use CT to check this, but there is the radiation exposure, and a margin for error involved with that. Plus I don't know if that's become something insurance will pay for.

Re:My first thought

[Anonymous Coward]

What about spontaneous human combustion like you see on TV. If I can turn my ex into a Magnesium candle, I am all for this

A way off?

[Chewbacon]

Just last year we were putting dissolving coronary stents in patients as a study in my lab. The researchers were highly selective about who was eligible based on a strict criteria. So I think putting electronics in them is even further off.

change diet not new gadgets

[Anonymous Coward]

Dr. Esselstyn at the Cleveland clinic has this diet (yeah pretty much vegan) that can reverse artery disease! I know a few heart docs at Cleveland clinic and they always talked about this guy. I actually saw photos of a completely blocked artery on x ray that after weeks it slowly opened up by just changing diet. Apparently the teflon like sheath inside arteries can get damaged, his diet restored the sheath and no more blockage. So if that is possible, the only reason to create some crazy stent like this is for money.

Would like to know

[raind]

more of what the issue is with the stents implanted in the last 10 years, like how long I got doc?

Another waist of medical R&D... IMHO

[Anonymous Coward]

When is the medical industry going to embrace regenerative medicine and in this case 3D printed vessels. I would think as long as it's been around this would be the first line of defense in helping someone with cardiovascular disease. I wonder if the medical, and more importantly the pharmaceutical industry will ever get a conscience and stop thinking about how to "treat" a problem instead of cure it. I know the answer, a drug or treatment is much more lucrative than fixing what's wrong. I mean if you can sell someone a $500/month(or dose in some cases) prescription (or install a stent that won't last but a few years), you've got repeat business (at least as long as the patient lives). However, if you replace a clogged blood vessel with one built as new using regenerative medical techniques that also use the patients own cells, well then, someone who is 50 might get to live to 80 or 100 without having to see the doctor again for the same issue.

Just search on the keyword "Breakthrough" in Google News with Search Tools set to the past 24 hours, and if you take the time to weed through the BS breakthroughs you'll find that almost daily there are medical breakthroughs and cures that we'll likely never see. Like most recently a cure for Alzheimer, color blindness, pancreatic cancer, and a regenerative technique to address COPD, to name a few.

Re:Another waist of medical R&D... IMHO

[Anonymous Coward]

if you take the time to weed through the BS breakthroughs you'll find that almost daily there are medical breakthroughs and cures that we'll likely never see. Like most recently a cure for Alzheimer, color blindness, pancreatic cancer, and a regenerative technique to address COPD, to name a few.

And who is vetting these putative medical breakthroughs? Do they know what they are doing?

Re:Another waist of medical R&D... IMHO

[Anonymous Coward]

If you do the research you'd find out these breakthroughs are being conducted by, and created by some of the best medical science has to offer.
A lot of it has gone through extensive testing. One of them, the cure for color blindness is starting human trials next year.
As for regenerative medicine, it's been around for decades, but has the medical establishment embraced it as THE go to solution to many problems? NO. How do you explain that?

As for your "who is vetting these putative medical breaktroughs and do they know what they are doing questions", ask yourself this.
Daily you'll see commercials for the "greatly vetted" drugs that help with any myriad of conditions, that many times have side affects more serious then the condition they purport to help with. So much so that they have to warn the user about many that can cause "serious injury, or even death".

So lets talk about a cure for pancreatic cancer, which is a death sentence to those who are unfortunate to get it.
Hmmm!, lets see, there might be a drug that can extend my life expectancy from a few months to a few extra months, or take a chance on a cure. Umm!, no brainer, give me the supposed cure!

Wake up sheep.

Re:Another waist of medical R&D... IMHO

[Anonymous Coward]

Daily you'll see commercials for the "greatly vetted" drugs

Those are probably mostly BS or harmful too. The vetting process is nonsense. Look up NHST.

Curious about arteries healing

[not5150]

Out of curiousity, when an artery is blocked with plague, what are the chances of it actually healing after a stent is popped in? My understanding was that the plague sticks to the wall and then the arterial wall kinda grows over it as a protection mechanism.

Re:Curious about arteries healing

[Anonymous Coward]

They have you take Plavix (Clopidogrel) for a year afterwards to thin the blood and help reduce the chances of plaque or clots forming. Ask me how I know....

Re:Curious about arteries healing

[tsotha]

Out of curiousity, when an artery is blocked with plague...

"Plaque", not "plague". An artery blocked with plague sounds very scary.

Re:Curious about arteries healing

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Try years. I had a medicated stent 6 months after a angioplasty, which was closing back up. Some months after that, the doctor decided to continue Plavix for six months, maybe a year.

That was eight years ago. Still on it.

Soon in our home appliances ?

[ctrl-alt-canc]

This technology opens new horizons for implementing planned obsolescence in TV sets, smartphones, vacuum cleaners...

If all they have is a hammer

[transporter_ii]

It seems exercise, in an actual trial, worked as good (or better) than a stent:

November 16, 2011 (Orlando, Florida) — Adding a supervised exercise program to optimal medical care can improve walking performance better than performing stent revascularization in patients with symptomatic aortoiliac peripheral artery disease (PAD), a small randomized trial suggests [1].

So...why would we do stents if exercise works as good or even better?

"It's also notable that, at least in North America, stent procedures are reimbursed, [and] supervised exercise is not," Hirsch noted.

http://www.medscape.com/viewar...

Re:If all they have is a hammer

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, because getting people to stick with an exercise regimen is a lot harder than getting them to not cut their chest open and pull out a stent?

Re:If all they have is a hammer

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Objectively, literally, by measuring outcomes, "You should exercise and lose weight" and all its variations, is a miserable medical technique. It rarely works, and when it does, is reversed in 95% of those cases.

Stent's don't improve outcome

[gurps_npc]

There are several studies that claim un-medicated stents don't improve life expectancy. They only reduce the need for future surgeries on that particular artery. http://www.medicinenet.com/scr...