Donate to Science & Enterprise

S&E on Mastodon

S&E on LinkedIn

S&E on Flipboard

Please share Science & Enterprise

New Balloon Catheter Reduces Cardiac Surgery Invasiveness

Fully inflated balloon catheter instrumented with sensors. ((Dae-Hyeong Kim, Univ. of Illinois)

Fully inflated balloon catheter instrumented with sensors. (Dae-Hyeong Kim, Univ. of Illinois)

A team of materials scientists, engineers, and physicians has successfully integrated stretchable electronics technology with standard balloon catheters now used inside the heart. The researchers from several universities and a company commercializing the technology, published their findings in the current online issue of the journal Nature Materials (paid subscription required).

Catheters are long, flexible tubes that can be threaded through a vein or artery to reach the inside of the heart. Using this type of balloon catheter combined with electronics can allow cardiologists to place sensitive electronics inside their patients’ hearts with minimal invasiveness, enabling more sophisticated and efficient diagnosis and treatment of disorders such as irregular heart rhythms.

Catheters with balloons at the end are commonly used for angioplasty, stent placement, and other procedures as passive mechanical instruments. When in place, the balloon inflates and gently presses against the surrounding tissue to open blood vessels or valves.

Cardiologists specializing in arrhythmias or heart rhythm disorders use catheters with electrodes at the end for detecting and mapping arrhythmias and for ablation, selectively killing small patches of cells that beat off-rhythm. Current arrhythmia procedures involve two separate, rigid catheter devices: one that maps the heart point-by-point as a cardiologist maneuvers the tube in search of irregularities, and one with an electrode at the end that ablates spots identified as aberrant, one at a time.

The new type of balloon catheter with electronics combines the two functions in one inflatable device (pictured above). Materials science and engineering professor John Rogers at University of Illinois in Urbana, who led the team, says “The idea here is instead of this single-point mapping and separate single-point zapping catheter, have a balloon that offers all that functionality, in a mode that can do spatial mapping in a single step.” The catheter, says Rogers, inflates right into the cavity and softly pushes all of the electronics and functionality against the tissue.

The researchers created a meshwork of tiny sensor nodes that can fit on a conventional catheter balloon. The sensors measure electrical activity of the cardiac muscle, temperature, blood flow, and pressure as the balloon presses against the tissue, along with electrodes for ablation. The entire system is designed to operate as the balloon inflates and deflates.

Rogers’ team also worked closely with mc10, a company he co-founded in 2008 that is commercializing the underlying technology for both medical and non-medical applications. Several researchers at mc10 are co-authors of the paper.

Read more: Robotic Catheter to Treat Cardiac Condition in Development

*     *     *

1 comment to New Balloon Catheter Reduces Cardiac Surgery Invasiveness