D
DANIEL
Step by step. I can only imagine where VR technology will be in twenty years !!
Daniel
Heart valves made with patient's own cells
Nov 14 (Reuters) - A new type of heart valve made with a patient's own cells may offer an alternative that is safer than other replacement valves, German scientists reported on Wednesday.
Diseased heart valves open or close improperly and can damage the heart. If drug treatment does not work, surgeons replace them with valves from pigs, cattle or human cadavers, or with mechanical valves.
Mechanical, pig and cattle valves work well for patients older than 60, but may not be appropriate for younger patients since they wear out too soon, said Dr. Pascal Dohmen, head of tissue engineering research at Charite Hospital in Berlin.
Valves taken from human cadavers can present other health hazards by provoking an immune reaction to another person's tissue.
To eliminate that risk, Dohmen and colleagues made valves using a patient's own cells.
The scientists started with valves from human cadavers and pigs, and then removed the living cells until only a scaffold of collagen and elastin remained. The scaffold retained the valve's original shape.
They then took endothelial cells, the cells that make up the lining of blood vessels, from a patient's vein in a leg or forearm and grew them on the scaffolding in the laboratory.
The valves have been implanted in 23 patients with an average age of 44, according to data presented at an annual meeting of the American Heart Association.
Dohmen said the patient's own cells form a completely new scaffold after about a year.
His patients have been studied for up to three years since receiving the tissue-engineered valves. "The patients are in very good shape," he said.
Imaging tests of the patients' hearts showed the valves were functioning normally and showed no signs of the calcium build-up that can destroy other types of valves, he said.
Patients also had a shorter recovery than usual for valve-replacement surgery, and had no postoperative fever, a common phenomenon with other valves, Dohmen said.
Daniel
Heart valves made with patient's own cells
Nov 14 (Reuters) - A new type of heart valve made with a patient's own cells may offer an alternative that is safer than other replacement valves, German scientists reported on Wednesday.
Diseased heart valves open or close improperly and can damage the heart. If drug treatment does not work, surgeons replace them with valves from pigs, cattle or human cadavers, or with mechanical valves.
Mechanical, pig and cattle valves work well for patients older than 60, but may not be appropriate for younger patients since they wear out too soon, said Dr. Pascal Dohmen, head of tissue engineering research at Charite Hospital in Berlin.
Valves taken from human cadavers can present other health hazards by provoking an immune reaction to another person's tissue.
To eliminate that risk, Dohmen and colleagues made valves using a patient's own cells.
The scientists started with valves from human cadavers and pigs, and then removed the living cells until only a scaffold of collagen and elastin remained. The scaffold retained the valve's original shape.
They then took endothelial cells, the cells that make up the lining of blood vessels, from a patient's vein in a leg or forearm and grew them on the scaffolding in the laboratory.
The valves have been implanted in 23 patients with an average age of 44, according to data presented at an annual meeting of the American Heart Association.
Dohmen said the patient's own cells form a completely new scaffold after about a year.
His patients have been studied for up to three years since receiving the tissue-engineered valves. "The patients are in very good shape," he said.
Imaging tests of the patients' hearts showed the valves were functioning normally and showed no signs of the calcium build-up that can destroy other types of valves, he said.
Patients also had a shorter recovery than usual for valve-replacement surgery, and had no postoperative fever, a common phenomenon with other valves, Dohmen said.
