Researchers at the University of Bristol, England, came to an exciting medical discovery that may relieve children born with heart muscle problems from suffering.
The discovery is a special medical adhesive containing stem cells that will save children from the risks of undergoing repeated heart surgeries.
Researchers, funded by the British Heart Foundation, have developed ‘stem cell patches’ which will revolutionize the way surgeons treat children with congenital heart disease so that they do not need as many open-heart surgeries.
Heart defects are the most common type of abnormality that occurs before a baby is born. These include defects in the baby’s heart valves and the major blood vessels in and around the heart.
Surgeons can perform open-heart surgery to fix the problem temporarily, but the materials used cannot grow with the child, and are rejected by the patient’s immune system, so the surgeon needs to repeat the operation following a period of time.
With these plasters, stem cells will be able to repair deformities, as they are designed to be integrated with the heart muscle, and then work to repair heart tissue without being rejected by the child’s body, in what the researchers described as a medical miracle.
