Dissolvable Electronic Stent Can Monitor Blocked Arteries 27
ckwu writes: To restore blood flow in a narrowed or blocked artery, doctors can implant a metal stent to hold open the vessel. But over time, stents can cause inflammation and turbulent blood flow that lead to new blockages. Now, researchers have designed a stent carrying a suite of onboard electronic blood-flow and temperature sensors, drug delivery particles, data storage, and communication capabilities to detect and overcome these problems. The entire device is designed to dissolve as the artery heals. Medical device companies and cardiologists could look at this electronic stent as a kind of menu from which they can pick whatever components are most promising for treating certain kinds of cardiovascular disease, the researchers say.
My first thought (Score:5, Interesting)
My first thought is I hope the patients kidneys/liver don't have issues removing the dissolved electronic device from your blood, and the thing doesn't dislodge while still dissolving and damage a heart valve or cause some other blockage.
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Anti-platelet therapy is pretty effective at preventing restenosis. Risk factor modification further improves outcomes. Regardless, it beats the alternative. Look at it this way: you could die as a result of getting a stent (bare metal, drug-eluding), but you will die if you sit around and do nothing.
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Yeah, you best hope a stent doesn't cause a clot either, or you don't react poorly to the clot medication, or get yourself hurt while on it...
Restenosis is going to occur with any stent. The endothelial cells that keep plaque from accumulating are long gone by the time we can detect the issue. Until a vessel is 90% stenotic, it will effectively flow the same. You can postpone restenosis with drug eluting stents, which have been in use for a long time now. The elution distance is not very far, so this type of treatment does not cause systemic issues with blood not clotting like taking oral medications.
If the electronics in this stent can gi
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If you read the article, there is an existing procedure that uses a dissolvable magnesium alloy mesh tube that expands to keep an artery open.
That's all good, the human body actually uses magnesium.
The additional electronics they're adding, who knows...
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A way off? (Score:4, Interesting)
Just last year we were putting dissolving coronary stents in patients as a study in my lab. The researchers were highly selective about who was eligible based on a strict criteria. So I think putting electronics in them is even further off.
change diet not new gadgets (Score:1)
Dr. Esselstyn at the Cleveland clinic has this diet (yeah pretty much vegan) that can reverse artery disease! I know a few heart docs at Cleveland clinic and they always talked about this guy. I actually saw photos of a completely blocked artery on x ray that after weeks it slowly opened up by just changing diet. Apparently the teflon like sheath inside arteries can get damaged, his diet restored the sheath and no more blockage. So if that is possible, the only reason to create some crazy stent l
Would like to know (Score:2)
Curious about arteries healing (Score:2)
Out of curiousity, when an artery is blocked with plague, what are the chances of it actually healing after a stent is popped in? My understanding was that the plague sticks to the wall and then the arterial wall kinda grows over it as a protection mechanism.
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Try years. I had a medicated stent 6 months after a angioplasty, which was closing back up. Some months after that, the doctor decided to continue Plavix for six months, maybe a year.
That was eight years ago. Still on it.
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"Plaque", not "plague". An artery blocked with plague sounds very scary.
Soon in our home appliances ? (Score:2)
If all they have is a hammer (Score:3)
It seems exercise, in an actual trial, worked as good (or better) than a stent:
So...why would we do stents if exercise works as good or even better?
http://www.medscape.com/viewar... [medscape.com]
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Um, because getting people to stick with an exercise regimen is a lot harder than getting them to not cut their chest open and pull out a stent?
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Objectively, literally, by measuring outcomes, "You should exercise and lose weight" and all its variations, is a miserable medical technique. It rarely works, and when it does, is reversed in 95% of those cases.
Stent's don't improve outcome (Score:4, Interesting)