American scientists tested the wireless heart

According to the authors of the new invention, patients with artificial heart or ancillary blood pump with the help of the new system will be able to obtain greater freedom of movement than before.

Specialists from the University of Washington (University of Washington) and the Medical Center of the University of Pittsburgh (UPMC) tested the wireless power system in conjunction with one of the commercial ventricular assist devices (VAD).

Headed by a project called Free-range Resonant Electrical Energy Delivery (FREE-D), Joshua Smith (Joshua Smith), who moved to the University of Washington from Intel, where he worked for several years on the system of electricity transmission by air.

It is a question of technology, in which due to the adjustment of the resonance frequency and other parameters of the receiving and transmitting coils, it is possible to transfer electric power over medium distances (tens of centimeters-meters) with high efficiency.

Earlier, cardiologists have already experimented with inductive power supplies for the cardiac implant pump, wanting to get rid of the wires passing through the skin (this is the gateway to infection that increases the risk of complications). But simple technologies (like those used in wireless electric toothbrushes) doctors disappointed - the transmission distance was a few millimeters and a side effect appeared in the form of unnecessary heating of tissues.

The mechanical heart is in a circle, in the background - the whole chain of wireless transmission of current (photo University of Washington).

Smith's system allows you to get rid of these shortcomings. It consists of two pairs of coils. The first (in the photo above it is visible to the right) is connected to the electrical network and transfers energy to the second coil (in the center), which, in theory, can be placed on the patient's clothing.

This second coil charges a human-wearable buffer battery (necessary to enhance autonomy), and also provides current to another transmit coil, of a smaller size. She is already engaged in the translation of energy into a very small receiving coil (4,3 cm in diameter) (in the photo on the left) in the human body and connected to an artificial heart, as well as with an internal buffer battery.

While such a set was tested in the laboratory. The coils were located on the table, and the VAD unit connected to them worked in a mug with a liquid. Power was transmitted reliably with an efficiency of about 80%, according to a press release from the University of Washington.

In the long term, the authors of the project see such a picture. In the patient's living or working room, several transmitting coils should be mounted - in walls, ceiling, under the bed and in the armchair. They should provide a chelovka with a cardiac implant for almost continuous recharge of batteries. To charge them, you do not need to connect to power outlets.

In a specially equipped room, a patient with an artificial heart or ventricular auxiliary device could live and work more freely than with systems of the previous model in which the performance of the implant is completely dependent on a battery that requires regular connection to the network (illustration of Pramod Bonde, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center ).

At the same time, the internal battery should allow a person to remain calmly outside the zone of the feeding coils and without a waistcoat for up to two hours. That will allow the patient, for example, to take a bath.

The results of the first tests of the system scientists presented at the annual conference of the American Society for the Development of Artificial Internal Organs (ASAIO), where they received an award for the most promising research in the field of artificial heart.

The next step of the authors of the prototype is the test of the wireless replenishment of the artificial heart implanted in the experimental animal.

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