A ground-breaking £1,500 artificial heart inspired by the anatomy of the cockroach could revolutionise human cardiac care, scientists in India believe.
The development of a robust, affordable and safe synthetic heart remains one of the holy grails of biomedical engineering amid a shortage of donated organs and rising levels of heart disease.
In Britain, critically ill adults wait an average of 103 days and children 143 days for a donated heart, according to the NHS.
In India, heart disease will end more lives per year than all infectious illnesses combined, including diarrhoea, tuberculosis and malaria, by 2015, World Health Organisation figures suggest, as Western lifestyle diseases take a grip.
The heart may appear quite a simple organ: a powerful muscle that acts as a pump to move blood around the body. But efforts to replicate it have floundered.
The two artificial hearts available in the US today are expensive, costing at least $50,000 (£30,000) apiece. Both have problems, with patients vulnerable to infections and strokes, experts say.
Sujoy Guha, a biomedical engineer at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, believes that the most critical problems are a result of artificial hearts attempting to mimic the real thing.
The human heart has four chambers, but only the left ventricle is responsible for building the pressure that moves blood around the body. Depending on one chamber to do the hard work places this part of an artificial heart under enormous strain.
Dr Guha likens the process to trying to scale a four-foot rise in just one bound. “Do it too often and your knees will give way,” he said. “Much better to use a series of small steps.”
The sudden build-up of pressure inside conventional artificial hearts can also damage blood cells, Dr Guha said. This can lead to clotting and strokes, and means that patients must be given anti-coagulants, which place them at risk of severe bleeding.
By contrast, his prosthetic heart builds pressure in stages, through five chambers — a model based on the anatomy of a cockroach. He has been working on his prototype heart, which is made from titanium and plastic and runs on batteries that can be recharged from outside the body, since the early 1960s.
The heart of the cockroach has 13 chambers, which build pressure in a series of steps. If one fails, the animal still continues living. “When I was learning my biology I became fascinated by the cockroach,” Dr Guha told The Times. “It is hardy [and] survives extreme conditions. It came into this world before humans and will survive beyond us.”
Dr Guha is testing his device on goats, and hopes to move on to humans in the next 18 months.
He believes that his artificial heart could be available in five years. He hopes to make one available for about £1,500, a feat he says is possible because his project is government-funded and will not have to pay research costs.
source: Timesonline.co.uk
A ground-breaking £1,500 artificial heart inspired by the anatomy of the cockroach could revolutionise human cardiac care, scientists in India believe.
