Engineers in the School of Biomedical Engineering and the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Colorado State University, Fort Collins, are developing a new family of replacement heart valves made from synthetic materials that, they say, will be superior to current mechanical and tissue-based heart valves.
The synthetic valves will address problems associated with both mechanical and bioprosthetic or tissue-based valves. Patients who receive mechanical heart valves must remain on lifelong anti-clotting medication. Tissue-based valves can harden over time and usually don't last more than 10 to 15 years. The valves to be developed in this project will be made from synthetic flexible materials containing hyaluronan, found in soft tissue, with a structure optimized for superior performance over a much longer period of time.
The researchers say that their next-generation synthetic material heart valves will allow for easy automated manufacturing, which would enhance consistency while reducing costs. Currently, more than 290,000 heart valve procedures are performed annually worldwide, and that is estimated to triple to more than 850,000 by the year 2050.
In addition to heart valves, the team hopes their strategy to reduce the need for anti-clotting medication will find applications in other medical devices where manmade surfaces come in contact with blood flow, such as implanted stents, ventricular assist devices, extra-corporeal circuits, and heart-lung and dialysis machines.
