Researchers from Boston Children's Hospital, the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, Harvard John A Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Karp Lab at Brigham and Women's Hospital used the catheter successfully in animal studies to facilitate hole closure without the need for open heart surgery.
Pedro delNido, Chief of Cardiac Surgery at Boston Children's and contributing author on the study, said the device represents a radical change in the way these kinds of cardiac defects are repaired.
Catheterisations are preferable to open heart surgery because they don't require stopping the heart, putting the patient on bypass, and cutting into the heart.
The unique adhesive patch was developed last year. While medical devices that remain in the body may be jostled out of place or fail to cover the hole as the body grows, the patch allows for heart tissue to create its own closure and then dissolves.
To truly realise the patch's potential, however, the research team sought a way to deliver the patch without open heart surgery. Their newly designed catheter device utilises UV light technology and can be used to place the patch in a beating heart.
The clinician then deploys the patch and turns on the catheter's UV light. The light reflects off of the balloon's shiny interior and activates the patch's adhesive coating. As the glue cures, pressure from the positioning balloons on either side of the patch help secure it in place.
"This really is a completely new platform for closing wounds or holes anywhere in the body," said Conor Walsh, Wyss Institute Core Faculty member, Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering at SEAS, founder of the Harvard Biodesign Lab at SEAS, and author on the paper.
"The device is a minimally invasive way to deliver a patch and then activate it using UV light, all within a matter of five minutes and in an atraumatic way that doesn't require a separate incision," Walsh said.