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Robotic 'leech' could end the need for open-heart surgery
Last updated at 10:37am on 19.04.07Since medieval times the leech has been used to cure everything from fever to possession by evil spirits.
Now doctors have brought it into the 21st century with a robotic version that can repair damaged hearts.
The tiny device slides across the surface of the still-beating heart, delivering treatment without the need for open heart surgery.
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Once inside the body, the Heart-Lander can inject drugs, attach pacemaker leads and may even be able to destroy damaged tissue.
Outside the body, the surgeon controls the two-ounce robot using a joystick and monitors its progress via a TV screen.
Its US inventors say its size and flexibility give it several advantages over current surgical techniques and believe it could even be used without a general anaesthetic, cutting down the length of time patients spend in hospital.
The HeartLander, which is the brainchild of scientists at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has already been used successfully on pigs, where it attached pacemaker leads and administered injections to beating hearts, this week's New Scientist magazine reports.
Other potential uses include destroying pieces of tissue that aren't working properly and even injecting stem cells into the heart.
Despite successful operations on animals, the first human trials are at least three years away and the device is unlikely to enter widespread use until at least 2013.
Glasgow University cardiologist Dr Andrew Rankin said: "This device is certainly unlike anything else I've seen. You can imagine this device moving around the surface of a scarred heart to deliver treatments-But Professor Peter Weissbergof the British Heart Foundation-cautioned it is a long way from the lab to the operating theatre.
He said: "While this is interesting, it remains to be seen whether it can deliver useful treatments.
"Most interventions are targeted around the inner surface of the heart, whereas this gadget runs around the outer surface.
"A lot more research is needed to determine whether something delivered to the outside surface of the heart can modify activity on the inside - so this is interesting but currently a long way from practical use."
