CCRG Director John Fraser talks about returning a pulse to mechanical hearts through pulsatile ECMO
#CCRG has been awarded one of 15 Biomedical Vanguard Research Grants from the #HeartFoundation to look at addressing the deficiencies of current ECMO with an innovative pulsatile flow technology, or "putting the pulse back into life support!"
"I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the Heart Foundation’s donors, hard working mums and dads, for believing in what we do. For 20 years, the Critical Care Research Group has worked hard to ensure that money entrusted to us is used as efficiently as possible, to translate today’s research into tomorrow’s treatments and pave the way for the next era of medical breakthroughs. This funding will allow us to progress our life changing, and life saving, research into ways to restore blood flow after heart attacks and cardiogenic shock."
Cardiogenic shock (CS) is a life-threatening condition where the heart fails to provide enough blood to vital organs to keep them alive. It is mainly caused by heart attacks where CS remains a leading cause of death. In patients with severe CS, machines are used to restore blood flow, despite a lack of evidence that they actually improve survival. These currently used devices are pulseless, providing a non-physiologic blood flow to organs that have evolved to survive with a pulse. This lack of pulse has been linked to severe complications. To improve patient outcomes, we propose a return to biology by adding a pulse to the mechanical heart. We believe that organs, which have adapted to a beating heart, will perform better with a mechanical heartbeat. However, before testing this unproven hypothesis on patients (as done with currently used devices for the last 20 years), we will assess the effect of the bionic pump with/without heartbeat in a blood loop of human blood, and then proceed with our validated, innovative preclinical model of CS.
We'd like to say a sincere thank you to the Heart Foundation and their generous donors for supporting the #Vanguard Research Grants initiatives. This ground breaking research is only possible with your support.
Established in 2004, the #CriticalCareResearchGroup is a world leader in critical care research and biomedical engineering, developing technologies that improve outcomes for critically ill patients.
With a highly-skilled team of international researchers and a collaborative approach to medical advancements, our aim is to increase understanding of the many issues that face critically ill patients and find new or improved treatment methods for hard-to-treat diseases.
This research aims to increase survival rates and improve the quality of life for patients with life-threatening conditions.
#ResearchSavesLives