title: The heart of the matter: from guided microtools to 3-D printing and precision genome editing, promising research could lead to new advances in pediatric cardiology.
abstract: The smooth, powerful muscles of a newborn baby?s heart are pulsing normally, squeezing in and letting go rhythmically as a 3-mm-wide catheter-like tube snakes its way through, entering via an artery and being guided slowly by a surgeon. When it reaches its target?a protruding knot of malformed muscle tissue within a ventricle that has been partly blocking the valve?the tip of the precisely controlled tube whirs into action, with tiny scissor-like rotating blades gently grinding up the excess tissue as those pieces are sucked back into the device, leaving no floating particles that could lead to a blockage elsewhere. The defect is fully removed, and the heart?s function is restored to normal, leaving the child with the prospect of a normal life. The whole minimally invasive process takes place inside a beating heart and would otherwise have required open-heart surgery, with the heart stopped for a cardiopulmonary bypass.
authors.forename: David L
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: Chandler
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001698:Biomedical Engineering; D006348:Cardiac Surgical Procedures; D002648:Child; D015316:Genetic Therapy; D006801:Humans; D051379:Mice; D055616:Microtechnology; D010372:Pediatrics; D066330:Printing, Three-Dimensional