Miniature robots as an alternative to open-heart surgery

Tiny robots have been developed that could cut a weeks-long treatment for heart infection down to a single day.

According to Ambassador Arjan, treating heart infection is not an easy task. Patients usually receive antibiotics for weeks through intravenous injection, and if this method is not effective, open heart surgery is presented as a high-risk option. Now, Johns Hopkins University engineers may have found a better way to treat this disease.

According to DigitalTrends, this group has created small magnetic robots called "millirobots" that are about the width of a pencil tip and the length of a grain of rice. These robots are designed to deliver medicine directly to the infected heart tissue.

What is the problem with the current methods of treating heart infection?

Endocarditis, or infectious inflammation of the inner layer of the heart, is a disease that affects about 50,000 people in the United States every year.

The usual method of treating this disease is to prescribe antibiotics through intravenous injection for several weeks; But the drugs are diluted on the way to the heart, and in many cases they cannot effectively clear the infection.

In such situations, doctors have to increase the dose of the drug, which increases the risk of toxic side effects, or go for risky open heart surgery.

How do these little robots work?

These robots work in groups and in cooperation with each other. The first robot, called the "needle module," attaches to the heart tissue near the site of infection and remains in place to provide the attachment site for the second robot.

The second robot, called the "pharmaceutical module", carries the antibiotic. This robot connects to the needle module using magnetic force and gradually releases the medicine at the site of infection.

Because the needle module remains in place, doctors can replace the drug module with a fresh one to administer subsequent doses.

Neither of these two robots have batteries or motors. Instead, a series of electromagnetic coils placed outside the body will remotely control the robots by generating magnetic fields. These fields are similar to the magnetic fields used in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines.

The senior author of this research says: A microrobot can be inserted into the body with just a small hole caused by the needle, and this process can be done without causing infection or bleeding.

From human heart model to pig heart tissue

So far, researchers have been able to guide these robots in models of the heart that simulate the structure of the human heart; Even when the simulated blood flow was against their movement. The technology has also been tested on pig heart tissue.

If all goes according to plan, this process may take about 10 minutes. If two stages of drug administration are needed, this time can reach about an hour.

Researchers hope that this method can reduce the treatment period of four to six weeks to one day or even less.

The next step for the research team is to test the robots on heart models that beat and contract like a real heart. This step can help to check the performance of robots in conditions closer to the real body condition.

Possible applications of this technology are not limited to the treatment of heart infections; Researchers say that in the future, the same technology can be used to directly deliver anti-cancer drugs to the desired location.