Big Hearts

Parents know how frustrating it is to endlessly replace children’s clothes as they grow. But imagine having to replace essential body parts at the same rate. Children born with heart defects can need as many as five open heart operations to replace artificial implanted valves as they outgrow old ones. Now a new approach has developed a valve that can adjust in size as the heart grows. The valve, pictured at different degrees of expansion, consists of a stainless steel structure and two leaflets that allow one-way blood flow. The design was modelled on valves in veins of the leg, and the width can be adjusted by a comparatively straightforward balloon catheter procedure. Having been developed in the lab, assessed through computer simulations, and finally tested in growing lambs, the next step is to prepare it for use in human hearts, no matter how large they grow.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Image by Sophie C. Hofferberth, Boston Children's Hospital
• Department of Cardiac Surgery, Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
• Image copyright held by the original authors
• Research published in Science Translational Medicine, February 2020