This dissolvable pacemaker could make heart surgery less invasive - PBS NewsHour

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Millions of Americans spend weeks recovering from heart surgery and other operations to repair brain and bone injuries every year. As special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro reports from Chicago, researchers are working on a novel approach to aid in that recovery. The story is part of our “Breakthrough” series.

Judy Woodruff:

Each year, millions of Americans spend weeks recovering from heart surgery and other operations to repair brain and bone injuries.

As special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro reports from Chicago, researchers are working on a novel approach to aid in that recovery.



Fred de Sam Lazaro:

John Rogers has no medical training, but his engineering laboratory at Northwestern University is a pioneer in the emerging field he calls electronic medicine.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:

It's a temporary, or transient, pacemaker that will be laminated like a piece of Scotch tape onto the heart after a patient has had surgery, and it's controlled wirelessly from a small module attached to the chest.

It would replace a far more invasive approach used today, and Rogers says it's made from elements the human body actually needs

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Fred de Sam Lazaro:

The new wireless pacemaker is controlled with the same technology used for touchless credit card payments, for example.

The idea for so-called transient medical devices like the temporary pacemaker traces back not to a clinic or an engineer's lab, but to a military incident involving the U.S. and Iran about a decade ago.

In 2011, not long after Iran downed an American military drone over its territory, Rogers says he got a call from the Pentagon.



John Rogers:

The vision was that, if an adversary captured a piece of sensitive electronics, it'd be very powerful, very useful to be able to trigger the dissolution or disappearance or disintegration of that piece of electronics.


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https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/this-dissolvable-pacemaker-could-make-heart-surgery-less-invasive