This 3D-printed, next-gen pacemaker may one day predict and treat heart attacks

An international team of researchers have designed and tested the next generation in cardiac pacemakers, which may one day be able to predict and treat heart attacks before they even happen.

Pacemakers are simple, but incredible pieces of technology, designed to keep a person's heart beating properly when it can't do so by itself. The basic design of the pacemaker hasn't changed all that much in the decades since it was first put into use, though. One or two electrodes (depending on what the person needs) are inserted into a vein leading to the heart, and deliver specially-timed electrical pulses to keep the heart beating at the proper rate. There are limitations to them, though. They tend to be a bit crude, overall, only allowing the most basic control; they only contact the heart in a few places, limiting exactly what conditions they can help with; and their long-term use is complicated by the fact that the electrodes can lose contact with the heart wall with time.

However, a team of scientists and engineers, led by researchers at the University of Illinois and Washington University, have developed a new prototype pacemaker that solves those problems while addressing the current demand for more personalized treatment approaches. Doing away with the current designs, this new pacemaker forms a membrane that would be studded with tiny sensors and electrodes, which would be specially-molded for a patient's unique heart structure and condition.

"Each heart is a different shape, and current devices are one-size-fits-all and don't at all conform to the geometry of a patient's heart," Igor Efimov, a professor of biomedical engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, said in a news release. "With this application, we image the patient's heart through MRI or CT scan, then computationally extract the image to build a 3-D model that we can print on a 3-D printer. We then mold the shape of the membrane that will constitute the base of the device deployed on the surface of the heart."

The researchers filmed this short video of the prototype attached to a rabbit heart:

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The kind of information that this prototype would provide to doctors could allow them to perform what the researchers call 'high-definition diagnostics' and provide 'high-definition therapy', essentially giving doctors a wealth of information about what's going on with the heart, and much more control over how it's operating. Also, by including sensors that monitor for the protein troponin, which is released by the heart muscles when they become damaged, the pacemaker could predict an impending heart attack and even change the heart's activity to prevent it from happening.

"This is just the beginning," Efimov said in the news release. "Previous devices have shown huge promise and have saved millions of lives. Now we can take the next step and tackle some arrhythmia issues that we don’t know how to treat."

(Photo and video courtesy: University of Illinois and University of Washington)

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