Every year thousands of babies are born with congenital heart defects. These small vascular holes need to be repaired to allow the child to live normally. There’s currently no harmless way of doing this – so Maria Pereira created a glue that can stick the chambers of the heart back together.
Pereira’s biodegradable adhesive can be activated by light. Unlike other glues, which get washed away by water, it can be placed in wet environments such as the heart, where it degrades slowly by surface erosion mechanisms. "Surgery is evolving from open surgery to minimally invasive," says Pereira. "We believe that this can be a tool to enable surgeons to change how surgery is done."
The glue is being brought to market by Gecko Biomedical. The company is currently testing it in clinical trials and hopes to introduce it in 2017.
------------
1 comment:
Did you know that you can create short urls with OUO and get $$$$ from every click on your short urls.
Post a Comment