In patients with cardiac arrhythmia, surgeons ablate the sections of the heart that cause unwanted electrical impulses. This is a minimally invasive procedure, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH) explained in a press release. A catheter is inserted through a vein into the heart, where it then locally generates heat to ablate the relevant sections. For this process, surgeons currently have to navigate the catheter tip through the blood vessels manually and can bend the tip using a pull wire inside, though in only two directions: to the left and to the right.
In collaboration with colleagues from the EPFL in Lausanne, researchers at the ETH have now developed a catheter with a magnetic head that is operated from a computer via an external magnetic field rather than being steered manually. This enables the front part of the catheter to be bent in any direction and the stiffness of this front section can be adjusted as well. A soft catheter allows for bends in very tight curves, for example, which allows surgeons to work with much greater precision. Since the magnetic catheter does not require a pull wire, it can also be made much thinner.
Patients must lie on a magnetic navigation system so these new catheters can work, which means the surgeon is in a control room next door rather than with the patient. This also provides better protection from the radiation of the X-ray machine used to generate images for navigating inside the patient’s body.
The researchers focused on using the catheter to treat cardiac arrhythmia for their proof of concept. They are also working on catheter applications in eye and gastrointestinal surgery.
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