A collaboration between UT Austin professor of biomedical engineering Elizabeth Cosgriff-Hernández and Dr. Mehdi Razavi of the Texas Heart Institute is showing promise to prevent fatal arrhythmias—one of the leading causes of cardiac arrest.
Partnerships between health care providers and engineers are crucial for academic research to translate into clinical use. The transformative work by Cosgriff-Hernández operates exactly at this interface, bringing novel engineering solutions to address critical medical challenges.
“The research-clinician partnership allows engineers to understand the translational challenges early in the design process,” said Cosgriff-Hernández.
Her collaboration with Dr. Razavi, Director of Electrophysiology Clinical Research & Innovations at Texas Heart Institute, focuses on innovative methods for preventing fatal heart arrhythmias.
Current treatment options for heart arrhythmias include medications and a procedure known as ablation therapy. Some patients require implantation of a defibrillator, which shocks the heart muscle back into normal rhythm with a painful, powerful electrical pulse. Since people never know when the shock will occur, many end up living with chronic anxiety and depression.
Dr. Razavi came to Cosgriff-Hernández with the idea of finding a solution to the problem—a matter that hits home for her.
“I have a family member who had a failed ablation procedure,” she said.
Their work is garnering national attention after Cosgriff-Hernández and Dr. Razavi received a $2.37 million grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), entitled Injectable Hydrogel Electrodes to Prevent Ventricular Arrhythmias.
Utilizing an existing proof-of-concept involving injectable hydrogel electrodes, the team of researchers is developing a combined material and delivery system that can work in conjunction with pacemaker technology to expand its capability to treat ventricular arrhythmias.
This technology is specifically targeted towards “reentrant” arrythmias, a type of abnormal heart rhythm that is the leading cause of sudden cardiac death.
Cosgriff-Hernández and her team created a formulation of two liquid components that become a gel when mixed. The research team is working on a divided catheter that keeps the liquids separate until they join within the blood vessel of the heart to form a conductive and flexible plastic wire.
By transforming these blood vessels into flexible electrodes, this new technology can restore conduction pathways through the heart, even across regions of scarring, and prevent fatal arrythmias.
While the results are promising, its use in humans is still far off.
