A New Technology For Eliminating Reblockage of Coronary Arteries , page 1

G'day

Here is another "good news" medical industry story!

As a complement to my thread regarding the use of the brand new & very innovative NanoKnife IRE technology (irreversible electroporation) for treating cancer.....

www.abovetopsecret.com...

.....here's another area of extremely interesting application of IRE wherein it is used to prevent restenonosis of coronary arteries after angioplasty procedures.

Therefore, in addition to the oncology applications, this innovative new IRE technology also shows great promise for the huge number of people with cardiac problems that are caused by blocked coronary arteries.

There certainly are some fantastic new technologies being developed by the extremely dedicated people who work in the medical industry.

Hebrew University scientist develops safe, quick technique for eliminating reblockage of arteries following angioplasty

www.huji.ac.il...

Seen at right is a full and partial view of an artery that has been treated with IRE. At left is an untreated artery. (Illustration courtesy of Prof. Boris Rubinsky)

An easily implementable technique to avoid reblockage of arteries that have been cleared through angioplasty and stent insertion has been developed by researchers led by Prof. Boris Rubinsky of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Angioplasty is the “gold-standard” treatment for acute myocardial infarction (heart attack), which is the result of abrupt interruption in blood supply to part of the beating heart, usually due to plaque-rupture in an atherosclerotic (hardened) coronary artery.

In angioplasty, a cardiologist dilates the blocked artery by inserting a balloon that is inflated at the point of blockage. This is usually followed by coronary stent implantation to protect the artery and prevent restenosis (reocclusion or reblockage). However, the procedure damages the arterial wall, and therefore restonosis of the dilated artery remains a major clinical problem in cardiology, as well as in other fields of clinical medicine.

Since heart disease remains the leading cause of mortality in the western world, the technique developed by Prof. Rubinsky’s research teams offer a highly valuable tool for dealing with cardiology patients. Prof. Rubinsky is the director of the Center for Bioengineering in the Service of Humanity and Society at the Rachel and Selim Benin School of Computer Science and Engineering of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a professor in the graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley.

The technique employs the biophysical phenomenon of irreversible electroporation (IRE). IRE destroys cells within seconds, using very short electric field pulses. It causes no damage to structures other than the cells themselves. Compared with other technologies for local destruction of cells and tissue, IRE is simple and does not require special training of the medical team.

In IRE, electrical fields are applied across targeted cells, penetrating the cell membranes, This process leads to cell death, since the electrical fields cause permanent damage to the membranes and the consequent loss of cell stability. The electrical fields damage only the cell membranes, with no collateral damage to other structures in the treated area. While the phenomenon of irreversible electroporation was known for decades, a team led by Prof. Rubinsky developed a new mode of application that affects only selected molecules in tissue, and as a consequence it has become only recently rigorously considered in medicine for various applications of tissue removal.

In an article published March 9 in the journal PLoS ONE, Prof. Rubinsky's team demonstrated that IRE can efficiently, safely and quickly destroy the cells responsible for the restenosis phenomenon in rats. In the study, IRE successfully destroyed almost all of those cells in less than 23 seconds, with no damage to any other structures. Clinical trials on humans for restenosis treatment are planned in the near future.

IRE has been recently used for the first time on human subjects in Melbourne, Australia, for the treatment of prostate, liver and lung tumors. Clinical trials for follow-up through IRE of angioplasty treatments are planned for the near future. Prof. Jay Lavee, head of the heart transplant unit at the Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, is cooperating with Prof. Rubinsky in development of the IRE technique for heart patients.

Kind regards
Maybe...maybe not

[edit on 11-3-2010 by Maybe...maybe not]

reply to post by Maybe...maybe not

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Any new technology that can potentially save lives like this is well worth watching. How long do you think it might be before it is available for widespread use in people?

Originally posted by Haftu Fokuss
reply to post by Maybe...maybe not

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Any new technology that can potentially save lives like this is well worth watching. How long do you think it might be before it is available for widespread use in people?

G'day Haftu Fokuss

My guess is 3 to 5 years.

I might make some enquiries to validate that timeline.

I'll reply with any new info I can obtain.

Kind regards
Maybe...maybe not

Thanks for this thread. I hadn't read about this new procedure before. The downside of cardiac surgery, however, is that I have yet to hear of any cardiac surgeon teaming up with a lifestyle change expert like Dean Ornish, MD, who performed several studies which proved that heart disease can be reversed with diet and other lifestyle changes.

In other words, any improvements gained thru cardiac surgery will be rather quickly lost if the patient keeps eating the same old stuff. Why is that? Well, here are 2 books on why anyone should care about the acid and alkaline balance in the human body and how it is affected by what we eat as well as other lifestyle preferences:

www.ohsawamacrobiotics.com...

The first book was written by Herman Aihara, president of a nonprofit foundation in California. His was the first book for a general audience on the topic of acid and alkaline. Must have stirred up some interest, because over 185,000 copies of that book have sold since then. The second book on that page (similar title) is last year's update on that topic, written in a much more readable style. It has also been expanded to include many foods popular in different cultures...it now includes nigella, for example.

reply to post by Uphill

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It can reversed with lifestyle, to a point. The early stages can absolutely be resolved by exercise and a healthy diet. However, once you have the beginnings of a blockage, usually due to damage to the endothelial lining allowing an accumulation of cholesterol and debris, it's very hard to undo that damage without a fairly invasive procedure, such as catheterization. The technology that Maybe has posted about, however, offers a new avenue of treatment that seems to offer much better prognoses. Very promising!

reply to post by VneZonyDostupa

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G'day VneZonyDostupa

1 of the problems with NanoKnife / IRE application too close to the heart is the electrical effect.....we have to synch the NanoKnife to the ECG, although this is more on an "in case" basis, rather than through empirical evidence of risk.

The coronary IRE safety data will be interesting.

Another thing I need to ask about is how they can work accurately with such small field areas, because the NanoKnife system settings do not allow any field sizes less than 10mm.

Kind regards
Maybe...maybe not

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