By Lauran Neergaard By Lauran Neergaard February 18 at 9:00 AM

Scientists are developing a robotic sleeve that can encase a flabby diseased heart and gently squeeze to keep it pumping.

So far its been tested only in animals, improving blood flow in pigs. But this soft robotic device mimics the natural movements of a beating heart, a strategy for next-generation treatments of deadly heart failure.

The key: A team from Harvard University and Boston Childrens Hospital wound artificial muscles into the thin silicone sleeve, so that it alternately compresses, twists and relaxes in synchrony with the heart tissue underneath.

Its an approach dramatically different from todays therapies and, if it is proven in people, it might offer an alternative to heart transplants or maybe even aid in recovery.

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You can customize the function of the assist device to meet the individual needs of that heart, said Frank Pigula, a cardiac surgeon who took the idea to Harvard colleagues developing soft robotics while he was at Boston Childrens.

More than 5 million Americans, and 41 million people worldwide, suffer heart failure, a number that is growing as the population ages. A heart left damaged by a heart attack, high blood pressure or other conditions becomes progressively weaker and unable to pump properly.

For severe cases, the only options are a transplant or battery-powered mechanical pumps that are implanted into the chest to take over the job of pumping blood. These ventricular assist devices, or VADs, prolong life, but running blood through the machinery can leave patients at risk of blood clots, strokes and bleeding.

That shouldnt be a risk with the robotic sleeve.

The nice thing about this is it can go on the outside of the heart, so it doesnt have to contact blood at all, said Harvard associate engineering professor Conor Walsh, senior author of a recently published paper on the idea.

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Unlike with traditional rigid medical devices, the soft-robotics approach allowed design of a sleeve that could fit snugly over a hearts irregular surfaces. The sleeve moves via artificial muscles, a concept that was developed in the polio era and is now being used in robotics.

The researchers programmed the robotic sleeve to move in the same pattern as the weakened heart muscle it surrounds while strengthening and optimizing each heartbeat. The device can be tailored to compress different sections of the heart.

As the sleeve relaxes, it helps the damaged heart expand and refill with blood to be pumped out with the next heartbeat, said Pigula, who is now with the University of Louisville.

The big test: The sleeve restored normal blood flow in six pigs that had been put into heart failure, Walshs team reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

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The experiments lasted only a few hours, and more research to test how long animals could live safely with the implanted sleeve is crucial before it could be studied in people, Walsh cautioned. He would also like to study whether physically moving damaged heart muscle exercising it, essentially might spur it to heal and require less assistance from the sleeve over time.

Im quite impressed with where this research is going, said Christopher OConnor, chief executive of the Inova Heart and Vascular Institute in Falls Church, Va., who wasnt involved with the sleeves development.

Researchers have previously tried socks and other ways to encase or compress the heart, but these efforts have met with little success.

Unlike those prior attempts, the new sleeve is smart, its robotic, said OConnor. They really worked on developing a device that can mimic the contraction of the weakened heart muscle and augment it so there is improved heart function without the theoretical clot risk.

Associated Press

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