CardiacPatch
BMES 212- Body Synthetic, Winter 2008 Project
W E L C O M E
This
website is part of our BMES-212, Body Synthetic, curriculum. The
information on this website is a compilation of our research about the CARDIAC PATCH.
The cardiac patch is a form of myocardial tissue engineering. The cardiac patch is a relatively new and improving field of tissue engineering. It involves the use of a porous scaffold or dense patch of natural or synthetic polymeric material to aid in the re-growth of heart cells after damage to the heart is sustained.
The cardiac patch is a form of myocardial tissue engineering. The cardiac patch is a relatively new and improving field of tissue engineering. It involves the use of a porous scaffold or dense patch of natural or synthetic polymeric material to aid in the re-growth of heart cells after damage to the heart is sustained.
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is one of the leading health problems in the world, and is the cause of 26% of all deaths in the Western world. The main cause of death for patients with CVD is myocardial infarction. This occurs when the blood supply to a part of the heart is obstructed, resulting in dead or damaged heart tissue. This dead tissue cannot repair itself and is replaced by scar tissue. This scar tissue does not have contractile, mechanical or electrical properties of normal heart tissue. This scar tissue does not behave as efficiently as normal heart tissue and can increase the stress placed on the heart as well as lower the hearts pumping efficiency. While the heart can temporarily overcome this loss of efficiency, it will eventually lead to heart failure.
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Once heart
failure has occurred steps need to be taken in order for the patient to
survive. These
include heart transplant
or ventricular assist devices (VAD).
Unfortunately
both of these options are expensive and there are a limited number of
heart
donors available. Therefore
it is
necessary to develop alternative solutions to the problem. The cardiac patch is one
of these
solutions. Previous
attempts to solve
this have been done using bone marrow cells or embryonic stem cells. These would be introduced
to the dead
myocardium. However,
this proved to be
inefficient.
There are two parts to a cardiac patch, the biomaterial scaffold and the myocardium cells. The biomaterial needs to be able to interact with the cells and promote cell attachment, growth and differentiation. The biomaterial needs to promote in vivo revasularization as well as encourage integration of the cells with the heart itself.
The use of
a cardiac patch allows an alternative solution to repairing damaged
heart
tissue. Normally a
heart transplant or
VAD would be used to treat this. A
heart
transplant involves replacing your current heart with one from an organ
donor. There are
many problems with
this. The number of
patients that need a
heart transplant exceed the number of donor hearts available. Also, complications can
occur from this
surgery such as tissue rejection.
This
surgery also requires the patient to be put on immuno repression
medicine which
can leave the patient at risk to other sicknesses.
VADs were originally designed for temporary
use until a donor heart was available.
They work with patients heart to assist a ventrical in
its
pumping
duties. They can be
used for long term
use, however are expensive and not always a good long term solution.
The
cardiac patch is unlike the previous two options in that it repairs the
damaged
myocardial tissue. Instead
of implanting
a device or replacing the heart it would now a possibility to fix it.This will enable many more people to be eligible
for a procedure to fix complication due to heart disease and myocardial
infarction.
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