Heart pumps are used to keep patients alive before heart surgery and require a large amount of power. The method currently used requires a wire cable to go through the stomach and chest.
This current technology is fraught with dangers like causing infections in about 40 percent of patients and can sometimes be fatal. In addition, the wires are given to breaking and inhibit a patient's activities.
"We would very much like for it to be the preferred choice for patients to be able to choose this type of pump over a heart transplant,” said David Budgett of the University of Auckland.
The new wireless pump is developed in collaboration between scientists from Auckland University's Bioengineering Institute, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Department of Physiology. It will be marketed by a new company, TETCor.
Features of the wireless heart pump
According to the scientists, the un-intrusive system uses magnetic fields instead of wire cables to pass power across a patient’s skin. This permits the pump to be continuously powered during a person’s lifetime.
Giving details about the pump, Dr Simon Maples CEO of TETCor stated, “This new wireless heart pump weighs only 92 grams and measures just seven centimeters by three centimeters.
He further added, "It uses a coil outside a person’s body to generate a magnetic field. A second coil placed inside a person’s body, near the collar bone, picks up the signal from this field and creates power for the pump.”
Dr Maples said the earlier attempts to develop wireless pumps produced too much heat that ended up "cooking a person from the inside". However, in the new technology, the heating problem is removed to deliver only the right amount of power.
Huge global potential for the wireless device
The potential of a wireless pump is huge worldwide because of very few donor hearts available.
Dr Maples stated, “These wireless heart pumps could be implanted in about 50,000 people each year around the world within 10 years. It’s probably the most extreme implantable medical device you can get. If these pumps stop, you only have about one minute to live.”
TETCor has gone into partnership with a US medical company MicroMe and together they plan to start human trials within two years.
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