the old number 8 fencing wire ideas cause a breakthrough ....
Auckland University scientists have made a breakthrough that could save the lives of thousands of heart patients worldwide and eventually offer an alternative to heart transplants.Scientists from the university's Bioengineering Institute, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Department of Physiology have developed the technology to power a wireless heart pump.
Heart pumps keep sufferers of congenital heart failure alive as they await a donor heart.
But heart pump wires, which go through a patient's stomach and chest, are restrictive, prone to breakage and can cause serious infections in about 40 per cent of patients, sometimes causing complications leading to death.
Auckland Bioengineering Institute technology development leader Dr David Budgett said the pump uses a technology known as transcutaneous energy transfer, where magnetic fields transfer power through the skin without direct electrical connectivity.
It uses a coil outside a person's body to generate a magnetic field. A second coil placed inside the body - near the collar bone - picks up the the field and creates power - between 10 and 25 watts - for the pump.
Dr Budgett said the pump could pump on average seven litres of blood per minute.
He said the technology has the potential to save many lives worldwide as few donor hearts are available.
"The objective here is to make this alternative much more attractive than a heart transplant.
"Worldwide about a million people are going to die of heart failure in the next year and only 3000 heart transplants are going to be done."
Dr Budgett said the wireless heart pump would run on a rechargeable external battery "not dissimilar to a laptop battery" with a run time of about five or six hours.
"You'd just swap them over as required," he said.
"There is a small internal battery inside the patient which would allow an hour of roam time where they could go and have a shower, they could go for a swim and basically be without their external coil - but not for very long."
Dr Budgett said the technology for the wireless heart pump, which has a price tag of US$86,000 ($122,000) had been licensed to the US medical company MicroMed with a view to starting clinical trials within 18 months.
Heart Foundation medical director Dr Norman Sharpe said the technology could benefit the few dozen New Zealanders who undergo heart transplants each year.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10597593
