Balloons and clowns supposedly make people happy. I’ve always thought clowns were a bit scary, myself, but I’m there on the balloons. Now one particular balloon has the potential to make thousands of currently-inoperable heart patients very, very happy.
The Sunshine Heart is a new device which addresses the problem of weak heart action in a novel way. A toroidal balloon, similar to a blood-pressure monitoring cuff, is wrapped around the ascending aorta and a sensor attached to the heart. The balloon cuff gives an extra squeeze at the appropriate time, acting as a booster pump. A particularly nice feature is that the bloodstream itself is not compromised– the device is completely external to the circulatory system. This drastically reduces certain types of complication, such as clotting or platelet buildup.
While in no way a miracle cure, it is likely to give people with certain types of heart failure the ability to live a much more normal life. Currently as many as 30% of heart cases are not suitable for invasive implant therapy such as a pacemaker. This technology holds out a great deal of promise for those folks. They’re taking an interesting development approach, too, one component of which is offshoring in Australia.
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