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Biotech Science

Heart Corset to Reduce Congestive Heart Failure 89

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the suck-in-that-ventricle dept.
Scientists have designed a new "heart-reinforcing corset" to help combat congestive heart failure. While there isn't a large degree of understanding of the condition, many believe that the heart expands in order to pump more blood as a reaction to damage or valve problems. This expansion generally exacerbates the problem, so the new reinforcing band is attempting to control the expansion of the heart thereby reducing the chance of failure.
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Heart Corset to Reduce Congestive Heart Failure More

Heart Corset to Reduce Congestive Heart Failure

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  • ..it will also help 'less endowed' female users to look a little more appealing?

    Oops...wrong kind of corset?

  • It seems like, we never ask that question with every medical breakthrough. Should we really be more inclined to wait for "the mass produced heart corset with McDonald's like installation service"

    Lest yeah laugh at my McDonald's surgery reference, ask yourself this. Does getting a sandwich at a fast food restaurant have a lower risk of error than getting open heart surgery? I would be willing to bet that there are a higher percentage of people that get a bad open heart surgery result than there are people
    • Have you ever looked in to how much of the "cost of health care" is administrative costs?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by stranger_to_himself ( 1132241 )

      It seems like, we never ask that question with every medical breakthrough. Should we really be more inclined to wait for "the mass produced heart corset with McDonald's like installation service"

      Right now I promise there are a million insurers and healthcare providers trying to work out if this thing will save them more money in adverse events or gain in disability adjusted life years than it'll cost them they offer it. There's also another group somehwere else working on a cheaper one.

      I don't quite

    • What in the hell? Ignoring your asinine comparison of fast food and open heart surgery, and forgetting for a moment that your entire argument is based upon speculative creation of statistics, how can you say American medicine is expensive for what you get?

      We're still the best medical system in the world as far as quality goes, so while our system is indeed expensive, you get a whole hell of a lot for your money, and lest you begin throwing around the word "value," keep in mind health care isn't something th

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by foobsr ( 693224 )
        We're still the best medical system in the world as far as quality goes ...

        ... drum fills ...

        "Seven years ago, the World Health Organization made the first major effort to rank the health systems of 191 nations. France and Italy took the top two spots; the United States was a dismal 37th. More recently, the highly regarded Commonwealth Fund has pioneered in comparing the United States with other advanced nations through surveys of patients and doctors and analysis of other data. Its latest report, issu
        • "As far as quality goes," not accessibility or the myriad other amusingly subjective factors the WHO uses.
        • As are other rankings. It's all about "how socialist" is your medicine, and not a valid comparison. I for one thought that if "the children" were so important, that parents might actually be motivated to pay for their health care. Obviously, "the children" are not so important, and so, somebody else should be responsible for their health care.

          If you have insurance in the USA, or a wad of cash, and you need an MRI, for example, you can get one. If you have insurance, and a wad of cash, you wind up gettin
    • Last time I checked, McDonalds was failing 100% of the time to make anything edible, but doctors at least save a few people with surgery.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • "why do several hundred million people around the world eat it every day?"

          Convenience and habit. It's CERTAINLY not for quality. Back in my younger days when I still ate that garbage, I sent many sandwiches back for "quality" errors.

          I'd rather have a home made burger over a McDonalds diarrhea patty any day. Not everybody cares as much about their health as me. Not everybody has the time that I do, or the willpower to stay away from such evil convenience.

          In any case, I was trying (and evidently failed) t

        • If their food is so bad, why do several hundred million people around the world eat it every day?

          Because human beings are not rational animals.

          On any given day, several hundred million people around the world do foolish or irrational things. From religious practices to politics to TV ratings, observation shows that popularity and quality are not correlated.

  • If your heart can't swell out, it will either constrict itself or "swell in". Result either case would be heart failure.
    • what scientific basis do you have for saying that? Swelling doesn't necessarily mean 'inflammation'... and even if you're a doctor, you know as well as I do that "Because I'm a doctor and I say so" isn't actually a scientific basis.
  • How would that affect normal physiological functioning? The heart pumps more often because it needs to get that blood out. By restricting that pumping function, the parts of the body that need it won't get as much blood. Anyone see any problems with this idea?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by dstiggy ( 1145347 )
      This device probably won't actually constrict heart function. If you make it slack when the heart has contracted and elastic enough it will just help to squeeze the heart during ejection and decrease the force required for the contraction of the heart muscles. Basically since the heart muscle won't have to work as hard it doesn't increase its muscle mass (similar to lifting weights and then stopping). This reduction in afterload has been shown to decrease heart size in certain instances, specifically in

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nizo ( 81281 ) *
      Though which would you rather have: decreased blood flow or the side of your heart blow out?

      • Though which would you rather have: decreased blood flow or the side of your heart blow out?

        Decreased blood flow is nasty in its own right too, especially reduced blood flow to the brain. It can mean often dizziness, confusion and/or constant anxiety (due to CO2 poisoning) even _with_ the heart allowed to expand to compensate for the valves malfunctioning. Reduce flow some more and, well, you might start losing neurons fast to lack of oxygen. And those don't regenerate, btw.

        Not that the other organs are bet

  • Blink-triggering glasses About 140,000 people each year in the US alone suffer damage to the nerve that controls blinking on one side of the face or the other.
    Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, know what I mean? But given the old methods of "fixing" this the glasses seem like the better option

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by FreddyKnockout ( 1114959 ) *
      Yeah, I agree, the second part of TFA is actually more interesting. The posted bit is about an excessively intrusive, potential solution to a preventable problem (stop eating so much Mickey D's people!), but the second bit about the eye glasses, that's actually a fairly logical process. I can't help but prefer logical, non-intrusive processes. The heart procedure is interesting, but it seems a bit much, especially considering TFA even says that they aren't quite sure if the problem is even caused by the he

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by timster ( 32400 )
        You know, it's interesting that we've gone back to the notion that every disease someone can get (from heart failure to cancer) is once again assumed to be that person's fault. We had a pretty good run there where it was just a tragedy when someone experienced organ failure and the doctors and researchers who could extend their life were seen as heroes. Now we're back to this stupid myth that almost every disease is preventable, if only you were a better person. And it's just as disgusting as it was 50 y

      • especially considering TFA even says that they aren't quite sure if the problem is even caused by the heart expanding.

        Nor are they quite sure that they can even make the thing. Or that it would work. It appears to be a goofy idea drawn up to grab some VC or government funding. I can think of couple of fairly large problems off the top of my head:

        - We're talking open heart surgery here. Not easy to do, not cheap. Lots of potential complications.
        - OK smarty pants, just try to get this one through the

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by CrkHead ( 27176 )

        The posted bit is about an excessively intrusive, potential solution to a preventable problem (stop eating so much Mickey D's people!)

        Not always preventable. Valve issues can cause CHF and those issues can be caused by genetics over ruling diet. Granted, genetics is just one of the risk factors and double cheese burgers likely cause more failures than genes, but it is not always a preventable problem.

        My experience? 34 year old vegitarian that gets regular light exercise under the supervision of a ca

  • Perfect! Just in time for the ren faire this weekend. You think they'll be selling these there yet?

    • Ahh, RennFest (Score:2, Informative)

      by R2.0 ( 532027 )
      Was just at the Maryland RennFest. Having gone there for the past 8 years, we've formulated some rules that should be enforced, but sadly are not.

      1) Just because it is acceptable to wear a "saucy wench" outfit doesn't mean you look good in it. Hence, mandatory 2 minutes in front of a 3 way mirror for anyone in garb prior to admittance.
      2) Women should not be allowed to wear bells around their waist with a belly dancer outfit when said belly is drooping to over aforementioned bells.
      2a) Women should not get
  • I suspect a new wave of crossdressing as new spam convinces people of the power of corsets.
  • Now your heart looks like a slut.

    Alternate punch line:
    Now your heart looks like it belongs in the band Heart.

  • rebuilding (Score:3, Funny)

    by blahlazer ( 750906 ) on Monday October 08, 2007 @01:49PM (#20901227)
    this will go great with my brain heatsink.

  • About Time (Score:3, Funny)

    by dazedNconfuzed ( 154242 ) on Monday October 08, 2007 @01:51PM (#20901255)
    Humorous to some, good news to others.
    I've been waiting for an advancement like this.
    Time to see my cardiologist.

  • Congestive heart failure (Score:3, Informative)

    by thewiz ( 24994 ) * on Monday October 08, 2007 @01:51PM (#20901267)
    The obligatory link to information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congestive_heart_failure [wikipedia.org]

    Having had congestive heart failure I can say that this device is only going to be useful in a limited number of cases. In my case, this device would not have helped as my first bout was caused by right ventricular hypertrophy due to aortic insufficiency and the second was a bout of pneumonia that cause fluid build up in the pericardium. The device may have helped the first time around to prevent the right ventricular hypertrophy, but would not have helped in the second as it would not have eliminated the cause.

    Still, it's good to see that medical technology is progressing! Better than valvuplasty and dacron VSD patches!

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      For those that aren't familiar with the physiology, congestive heart failure can be caused by numerous problems in the cardiovascular system. One of the causes is a defect in heart valves allowing blood to flow backwards, preventing the heart from properly pumping blood to feed itself and the rest of the body. Another of the causes can arise from hypertension. Hypertension in the blood vessels means the heart has to put more work into pumping the same amount of work. Usually the heart then tries to adapt in
  • They did this in the new Outer Limits already... remember the old guy who just wouldn't die and wanted the heart corset instead of giving it to the teenage girl. :)
  • ...does this make my heart look fat?

  • Unsure if this is addressing the real problem? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    My understanding is that the heart enlarges to push blood better through blood vessels that have become smaller from plaque buildup. While the corset may prevent this; it doesn't fix the problem of the arteries occluding from poor diet, smoking, diabetes, and genetic predisposition. The way they fix this now is through arterial grafts to create a bypass. This technological corset application might help somewhat but it's skating the issue of preserving cardiovascular health. I have no medical training but I

  • Surgical treatment of enlarged heart. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anti_Climax ( 447121 ) on Monday October 08, 2007 @01:59PM (#20901425)
    It sounds like it's a related concept to this older concept [nytimes.com] but much less risky and invasive.
  • Forgive me in my ignorance but if a heart expands in order to pump more blood because there isn't enough blood flow, wouldn't this device essentially cause insufficient blood flow, which, depending on where it happens, will cause a stroke?

  • Cardiology primer (Score:5, Informative)

    by neapolitan ( 1100101 ) on Monday October 08, 2007 @02:08PM (#20901569)
    I'm a cardiologist - a couple of big points here...

    Five second primer on cardiology: All muscles have a force-strength relationship that increases with distance stretched. That is, the farther you stretch a muscle, the more forcefully it will contract. This is called the Starling relationship. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starling_law [wikipedia.org]

    Thus, when your heart is failing, what does it do? It allows itself to become more distended, increasing the stretch of each muscle cell, which increases the force of each beat. People that have heart failure often have big, dilated hearts in the body's attempt to generate every bit of force from it.

    Unfortunately that dilation has negative effects. Specifically, after a while the heart can not handle the increased stretch and wall strain, and muscle cells will start to fail / die, and they become altered at the cellular level in ways that is detrimental over the long term.

    Cardiac banding as described is a way to put a "girdle" on this failing heart, to *prevent further dilation* in hopes of minimizing negative consequences as above. It is used in *an already failing heart* in a kind of palliative sense. The summary is a bit misleading - it makes it sounds as though this patches it to prevent failure.

    The idea is widely proposed and you can find it in many textbooks already; the patent by this Stanford group is for a specific implementation / material / technique. There are a few companies making banding / mesh devices, but none are in completely mainstream use yet. I work at one of the largest quaternary care centers, and have seen only two.

    One of the concerns is that medium to long term outcomes are not really established, and this may give a restrictive effect -- that is, prevent adequate filling of the heart and impair blood circulation in that method. It is an active area of research, however, and IMHO is quite exciting.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tsotha ( 720379 )

      I think there may be some benefit to keeping the heart in a shape that's more correct as well. Isn't that the principle behind the Batista procedure?

      Scientific American did an article years ago about mathmatical flow analysis of blood moving through the heart. The researchers opined the shape of the heart was something of an engineering marvel all by itself.

    • I wonder if they have considered a cardiac "net"
      Attempting to expand upon the idea...a net could be used instead of a band and could be composed of synthetic proteins designed to match general human dna as closely as possible to prevent rejection. The net could be tightened of loosened without the need for additional invasive surgery. But hey...all this could be moot if stem cell research would simply allow them to grow me another heart using my own DNA...but perhaps a replacement brain is what I need, comp
  • Without reading through the patent, It would almost certainly have to be on the inside of the pericardium. Otherwise, the heart would squeeze the pericardium cells in between. I just wonder if the heart cells would survive this as well. It strikes me that after a length of time the outer cells would be cut off from blood as well. Kind of like putting a bad around a growing child's leg. Of course, this is more likely to occur in older folks, so, it may give them more time. But strikes me as treating the symp
  • ...Be Slim My Aching Heart.
  • This story has no relevance to any of the usual slashdot themes. But it's obvious why it was posted. To get a few laughs out of corsets-for-men jokes. It's not like I had high expectations to begin with. But this is a new low.
  • are ready to accept their nobel prize in medicine
  • Does anybody else have a problem with these two statements being together?

    Scientists have designed a new "heart-reinforcing corset" to help combat congestive heart failure. While there isn't a large degree of understanding of the condition...
    Isn't that pretty much how medieval medicine worked? "We don't know why this person's sick, but we'll just try this thing to fix it."
    • Not the best analogy. The issue here isn't that we don't have any idea what CHF is, but rather that we don't really have a comprehensive physiological understanding (compare Tay-Sachs). We know some of what goes on, if you didn't gather that from all the posts from MDs on here giving overviews, and the corset is targeted at a specific aspect of the condition that is understood well enough to attempt treatment. Would you prefer we waited for more research before ordering Lasix or making recommendations like

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by trongey ( 21550 )
        It's Slashdot. This isn't the place where people come to find good analogies, or, really anything approaching coherency.
  • so they can look good in music videos?
  • Victoria's?

    Or, of the construction labor/Home-Depot/grocery clerk secrets. Oh, theirs is to reduce expansive gut success...
  • When i first saw the title i read it as: "Horse corset to reduce congestive heart failure" and i asked myself why the hell do horses need corsets? and why the hell would they reduce congestive heart failure?

    At which point i re-read the title (got it correct this time) and commented to myself: "that was one hardcore corsetter that first tried this"

    I think i need some sleep

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