
Scientists have created a silicone beating heart - Jaruzel
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/12/scientists-have-created-a-silicon-beating-heart/
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lancebeet
Title is confusing. Silicon and silicone aren't the same thing.

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cdancette
I've always wondered why english doesn't use the word "silicium" instead of
silicon

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crispweed
> Currently used blood pumps have many disadvantages: their mechanical parts
> are susceptible to complications while the patient lacks a physiological
> pulse, which is assumed to have some consequences for the patient.

Kind of weird, but apparently people with artificial hearts that _don 't_ give
a pulse don't really suffer any obvious consequences:

[https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-02/no-pulse-
how-...](https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-02/no-pulse-how-doctors-
reinvented-human-heart)

~~~
mikestew
I've often wondered, but have never heard anything one way or the other, if
not having a pulse might not be better. I mean think of all of the physical
things that have reduced lifespans due to pulsing. Whether it's high frequency
like vibration, or low frequency like when your car's brake rotors are warped.
Not only do the brakes not work as well, it's hard on wheel bearings and to a
lesser extent suspension parts. Or did our vascular system evolve to rely on
that pulse? Like, I dunno, helps keep arteries clear or something.

Unfortunately, last I paid attention, artificial heart patients don't live
long enough to make an evaluation.

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pawn
How can we get something like this pushed further along, assuming you're not a
scientist working on it directly?

With heart failure the number one killer in the United States, I'd like to see
these things in every Hospital asap.

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chillingeffect
> I'd like to see these things in every Hospital asap

Yes sir, right away sir.

Seriously though, Ventricular Assist Devices have been available for decades.
I have worked with clients who make them. You can get one today if you have
heart failure through your insurance company while you're waiting for a
transplant.

When they say: > The reasoning why nature should be used as a model is clear.
Currently used blood pumps have many disadvantages: their mechanical parts are
susceptible to complications while the patient lacks a physiological pulse,
which is assumed to have some consequences for the patient.

In fact, it's not clear at all (always, always remember the Gell-Mann Amnesia
effect). The first generations of VADs were pulsatile because they "assumed
nature" should be a model and they had many problems in patients.

Then the next generation of continuous rotary pumps came out and are the only
ones (in fact only 3 pumps today are used, HeartMate II, HeartMate III and
HeartWare HVAD) that last for years. btw 180 days is the typical wait time for
a transplant. Then artificial pulsatility was added to the rotary pumps,
mostly out of an imaginary need for a pulse, but no one has been able to prove
a pulse is necessary.

As this is a project by a materials research group, I'm confident this is a
pilot project and their goal will be to improve the lifetime of the materials
by X%. That means, it will be a long, long time before this style of pump is
found in bodies. Notice they're not assessing thrombosis or hemolysis, etc.

If you sincerely want to reduce heart disease, focus on improving peoples'
diets, exercise and stress/sleep. That will have the most effect. For many
people, damage is self-inflicted and they ruin enough of their vasculature and
organs that a replacement heart won't do any more than a new power supply on a
dead motherboard.

~~~
pawn
>> I'd like to see these things in every Hospital asap

>Yes sir, right away sir.

If I seem a bit emotionally invested in the topic, it's because I am. My dad
died from a heart attack a little under two years ago. One of the side-effects
for me has been noticing articles about advancements in the field and caring
about them more than I used to. If he had died from it before anyone could
potentially do anything, that'd be one thing. But that's not what happened.
Medical staff was on-site within minutes. They even claimed he was still alive
by the time they arrived at the hospital. But still, he died. He was a month
shy of 60.

Of course if he had improved his diet and shed some pounds, he might not have
found himself in that situation to begin with so early, but given that heart
failure is the number one killer in the US, I don't think that answer is good
enough by itself. We need to get to the point that we can save people more
consistently.

Heart disease killed more than 10 times as many people in 2016 as any sort of
gun death in the US. We should be a lot more concerned with solving this
problem as a society.

It's not just big guys like my dad who are at risk. My six year old niece has
a small heart defect that could be a problem at some point. You'd think that's
pretty rare, but according to some studies, that makes her 1 out of 100 kids.

This stuff needs to be fixed.

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lholden
Saw title... was "Why silicon? I mean that's a hard substance... maybe they
mean because it has electronics?"

Read article... they mean silicone. Very different substance!

Silicone is reasonable well tolerated... though apparently they have a lot
solve in regards to durability before such a thing is remotely viable.

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gene-h
There are two problems with this lifetime and power supply in that order. The
first is that the lifetime was only 3000 beats, which at 40 beats a minute
translates to about an hour and a half of use. In comparison, the jarvik 7,
one of the first artificial hearts was used in a patient for 620 days[0],
which at 40 beats per minute translates to about 36 million beats.

In my opinion, I think it will be very difficult to modify this heart to last
this long, especially if it experiences significant elastic deformation. To
get this significant elastic deformation we need soft materials like
elastomers, which don't tend to have very good fatigue properties under
significant elastic deformation. The authors even admit that "this issue is a
game breaker and needs to be resolved."[1] Developing elastomers that can
withstand the number of cycles is quite challenging.

This heart is pneumatically powered, so the patient needs to have tubes going
through the skin connecting to a pneumatic power supply. These can be bulky,
they can be portable, but still somewhat bulky[2]. For something that keeping
you alive, this may not matter too much if the benefits of using the device
are sufficient.

Although I'm not really clear on what the benefits of using this are(I must
admit I am not an expert in artificial hearts). One big claimed advantage is
that they may reduce the dead spots in the heart. Dead spots are regions of
low fluid flow, these are bad, because they can cause clots to form. Some
artificial hearts deal with this now by having the patient take
anticoagulants, so reducing them is a pretty big deal. But they have not
demonstrated this. Although this is pretty difficult to do, they'd have to
find a way to make the heart transparent to see the fluid flow inside.

[0][http://www.texasheart.org/Research/Devices/j7tah.cfm](http://www.texasheart.org/Research/Devices/j7tah.cfm)
[1][http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/aor.12956/abstrac...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/aor.12956/abstract)
[2][http://www.pneumatictips.com/miniaturization-makes-
pneumatic...](http://www.pneumatictips.com/miniaturization-makes-pneumatics-
choice-medical-applications/)

~~~
AstralStorm
As far as I recall, this is not the first soft heart. Previous attempts were
made out of synthetic fabrics alleviating many problems with elastomers, for
valves and aorta patches. If these fabrics were electrically sensitive, they
could beat, problem being biocompatibility.

Jarvik-7 is not a whole heart, it is an LVAD. And yes it has a pulse due to
pump peristaltic action as opposed to some continuous flow devices.

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cdancette
How does this differ from carmat ?
[https://www.carmatsa.com/](https://www.carmatsa.com/)

I think it's one of the most advanced, and it's been in testing phase for a
few years now, I think with good results

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Jyaif
The main difference from the POV of a patient is that Carmat's heart lasts for
years while this one lasts less than an hour.

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agumonkey
I wonder if we could have heart wrapping aid. For some people with partially
failing heart, not structural but more like dead tissue, an external pressure
help from the wrapper could help restore proper blood pressure without
requiring replacement.

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ta654654654
Something similar exists, yes:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ventricular_assist_device](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ventricular_assist_device)

But it sucks to be on one and a transplant is usually better. (AFAIK, not a
doctor.)

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agumonkey
This is damn invasive. I meant something with a contractile tissue that would
wrap the heart, not a secondary pump

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amelius
Video here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUYNXeHfTdQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUYNXeHfTdQ)

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lawlessone
Is'n't the airpump still a potential point of failure?

Still this looks great, i hope it works.

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wizzerking
Agreed someone needs to create a subject checker, not just a spell checker

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bgun
Although in this case the article itself made the mistake, not the HN poster.

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amelius
What does it use as a power source?

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proaralyst
Looks like compressed air.

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bolololo1
Amazing! It might save millions of people one day

