Your heart looks nothing like an emoji. It's not bright red and shiny. It doesn't have two humps. And it does much more than sparkle and cover the front of Valentines Day cards.
Your heart is a muscle — about the size of your fist — that works hard to move blood around your body to provide you with oxygen and nutrients. The blood flow also carries away waste.
When your heart is healthy, it is one mean, lean, pumping machine. But when your heart is not working properly, it can slow you down and harm your health. That's where science can help. Here's how.
Drumming the Right Beat
If a heartbeat is too slow or too fast, a doctor may recommend a pacemaker, a small battery-operated device that helps your heat beat in a regular rhythm, according to the American Heart Association (AHA). It helps improve heart health and enables people with abnormal heartbeats to live normal lives. Here's a rundown of how a pacemaker works, as explained by the AHA:
- A pacemaker consists of wires and the small generator, which runs on a battery.
- A surgeon implants the generator under skin through a small incision.
- The wires, or leads, connect the generator to the heart.
- The generator sends electrical impulses through the wires to stimulate your heart to beat.
- The impulses are timed to flow at regular intervals.
Early Innovation
The pacemaker was invented by happy accident.
According to The Washington Post, Wilson Greatbatch, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the University of Buffalo, was building equipment to monitor heart sounds back in 1956. He mistakenly placed a powerful transistor into an instrument, and the combination produced an electrical pulse similar to the rhythm of a human heart. Greatbatch realized the device could help the human heart beat and — eureka! — the first pacemaker.
Today's Pacemaker Progress
Pacemakers have come a long way since Greatbatch's discovery. Over the years, scientific innovation has allowed the medical device to become smaller and smarter.
Abbott's breakthrough pacemaker, for example, called the Assurity MRI™ pacemaker, is now the world's smallest, longest-lasting, wireless MRI-compatible pacemaker.
The Assurity MRI pacemaker was recently approved for magnetic resonance-conditional labeling by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The groundbreaking pacemaker includes wireless remote monitoring that allows doctors to access the user's diagnostic data and daily device measurements. This information helps doctors monitor and track a person's heart.
Stronger with Stents
A stent is a small tube inserted in an artery. Stents are generally made of metal mesh or sometimes fabric. Fabric stents, called stent grafts, are usually inserted in large arteries. If you have a weak artery, a doctor may place a stent inside to improve blood flow and stop the weakened arteries from bursting.
Think of scaffolding that helps support a building or bridge that's undergoing construction or repair. Like scaffolding, stents help keep weak arteries from falling down, and they strengthen the structure of your heart.
Cutting edge advancements have been made around stents in recent years. Abbott's XIENCE Everolimus Eluting Coronary Stent System, for example, provides mechanical support to a person's artery while a drug called everolimus is slowly released into the artery wall around the stent. The release of everolimus helps limit the overgrowth of tissue within the coronary stent.
While stents and pacemakers have advanced by leaps and bounds over the years, there are still more scientific developments to be made around the heart-aiding devices. That's why the interest and brain power of young scientists is so important. People just like you can easily become the next Wilson Greatbatch with a little curiosity and a whole lot of cool science!
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