A team of Austrian scientists has discovered that bombarding patients with specific pressure sound waves during open-heart surgery is a good idea, as they utilized this innovative technique to reactivate heart cells and improve patients' post-surgery lives in a pioneering study, according to New Atlas citing the European Heart Journal.
**Shock Waves**
Shock waves, or specific pressure sound waves, are adjusted to achieve a specific effect. In the medical field, they are used to treat various conditions, such as breaking kidney stones or helping damaged tendons heal. In a study conducted at the Medical University of Innsbruck in Austria, researchers managed to tune the shock waves from a portable device to blast small bubble-like structures called vesicles from cellular surfaces, leading to the activation of an immune system receptor known as TLR-3. When this innovative technique was used during a bypass open-heart surgery, the results were impressive.
**New Blood Vessels**
Lead researcher Johannes Hulfeld stated, "We were able to demonstrate that the effects occur via the TLR-3 receptor, which not only converts connective tissue cells into blood vessel wall cells but also promotes the formation of new blood vessels." He explained that "new blood vessels sprout in the heart muscle, which suffers from chronic supply shortages, actively contributing to the heart's performance in pumping blood."
**Activating Heart Muscle**
In other words, the new technique helped form new blood vessels along with reactivating heart muscle cells that become dormant during a heart attack, depriving specific areas of the heart of blood, thus enhancing the heart's performance in pumping blood. Hulfeld added that "it is known that every five percentage points of improvement in pumping performance leads to a significant decrease in the need for hospital readmissions and extends the average life expectancy," noting that the results "showed an average improvement of about twelve percentage points."
**"Space Hairdryer"**
Hulfeld explained that due to the regenerative effects of shock wave treatment, patients who received about 10 minutes of therapy during surgery ended up recovering much stronger than those who did not receive it. He revealed that a year after the procedure, the group of patients that received shock waves was able to walk 100 meters farther in a six-minute period compared to the group that did not receive the shock wave treatment. They also reported a better overall quality of life.
Researchers indicate that more than one-third of heart failure patients could benefit from this innovative therapy, emphasizing that the device that emits the shock waves, dubbed the Space Hairdryer, is in development and is expected to be on the market by 2025.
