Scientists develop mind-blowing 3D-printed tech that could could revolutionize heart health: 'We wanted to solve this problem'

Organ-mending patches developed by experts at ETH Zurich in Switzerland could help human hearts heal following an attack. 

The amazing innovation has successfully been tested on pigs, sealing heart wounds and withstanding blood pressure without leaking, according to a news release from ETH. 

"Traditional heart patches do not integrate into the heart tissue and remain permanently in the body. We wanted to solve this problem with our patch, which integrates into the existing heart tissue," lead study author Lewis Jones said in the summary. 

An ETH video of a procedure shows the researchers placing the small Reinforced Cardiac Patch, or RCPatch, on a pig's left ventricle wound. 

It's a tiny square with a damage-sealing mesh, a 3D-printed degradable scaffold, and a hydrogel filled with living heart cell muscles. The ETH patches are an improvement over bovine-based ones currently used, which can cause inflammation, thrombosis, and calcification in humans, all according to the release. 

The scaffold breaks down after the wound has healed and the cells have grown into the heart. Unlike other options, this method leaves no foreign bodies on the organ, the experts said. 

The goal is for the patches to help the organ fully regenerate following heart attack damage. Success would be massive, as the World Health Organization reported that cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death, killing 17.9 million people annually. Worse yet, one-third of those people are under age 70. 

It's a problem exacerbated with each breath. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said that heat-trapping air pollution can make heart diseases worse, even causing them to develop. Almost everyone on the planet breathes dirty air, the WHO added. 

ETH's innovation might not clear the atmosphere, but it can remedy heart failures with a better treatment. 

"Our goal was to develop a patch that not only closes a defect but also helps to repair it completely," ETH Zurich professor Robert Katzschmann, the research co-lead, said in the release. 

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Other breakthroughs in medical tech have the potential to make key treatments more accessible, such as a low-cost nebulizer being developed in Pakistan. A team from Canada and California is working on a hydrogen-powered helicopter made to deliver lungs to transplant patients without planet-warming exhaust. 

It's important to stay informed about how our overheating world is impacting our health and about the innovations that are being developed as an answer. With the right information, you can invest in efforts that share your values. Even talking about the topics with friends and family is an investment in shared understanding about our changing world, guiding our way to a cleaner, healthier future. 

Up next at ETH are more long-term animal studies to test the patch's effectiveness. But initial results are heartening. 

"The combination of the three components results in a dense, easy-to-use heart patch that is partly made of living cells," per the release.

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