Stretchy electronics aid heart surgery
New balloon catheters may help cardiologists treat common problems
The latest tool for heart surgery is a lot like a balloon animal, with an electronic twist.
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By wiring up inflatable devices called balloon catheters with new elastic electronic devices, doctors may be able to measure precise temperatures and even deliver tiny electric zaps to steady a heartbeat, all from inside a blood vessel. That ability could make a common procedure for heart arrhythmia called ablation therapy faster and more effective, an international team reports in the March 6 Nature Materials.
Like expert weavers, doctors can thread balloon catheters — thin tubes carrying an expandable balloon at their tip, useful for opening up clogged arteries — through blood vessels. Once there, though, the catheters can’t provide much in the way of diagnostic information, says study coauthor John Rogers. “Balloon catheter technology today — it’s used just as a dumb mechanical implement,” says Rogers, a materials science researcher at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.