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Dissolving stent for heart arteries passes first large test
Now you see it, now you don't. A new type of heart stent that works like dissolving stitches, slowly going away after it has done its job, passed its first major test in a large study, doctors said Monday.
Abbott Vascular's dissolving Absorb stent performed as well as a conventional stent in the one-year study, but the fact it did not prove superior led some experts to be wary.
Still, the results on this and other novel stents currently in testing are fueling hope for a new generation of these devices, used on about 850,000 heart disease patients each year in the United States alone.
Stents are tiny mesh cages that keep blood vessels from reclogging after an artery-opening angioplasty procedure. The ones available now in the U.S. are permanent implants made of metal, usually coated with a material that oozes medicine, but they sometimes cause inflammation and other problems years down the road.
The Absorb stent, already sold in Europe, is made of a degradable material that's designed to stay intact and release medicine for a year, then break down over the next two years.
"It holds the artery open long enough for the artery to heal," then completely goes away, said one study leader, Dr. Dean Kereiakes of Christ Heart and Vascular Center in Cincinnati. "It can return the artery to its normal, natural structure and function."
The study involved about 2,000 patients with chest pain due to one or two clogged arteries, and was aimed at winning Food and Drug Administration approval to sell Absorb in the U.S.
This undated image provided by Abbott shows their experimental heart stent "Absorb." Doctors say the new type of heart stent that works like dissolving stitches, slowly going away after it has done its job, passed its first major test in a …more
In the study, those treated with the dissolving stent fared as well as those given a conventional Abbott stent called Xience. After one year, 6 percent to 7 percent of both groups had died of a heart-related cause, had a heart attack due to a problem with the treated artery or needed a new artery-opening procedure.
The dissolving stent did not prove better, though, on several measures, and the trends were leaning in the opposite direction, noted Dr. Robert A. Byrne of the Technical University of Munich, who has been a paid speaker for some rival stent and heart device makers.
He wrote a commentary published online with the study by the New England Journal of Medicine. Results also were discussed Monday at a meeting of heart specialists, the TCT conference, in San Francisco. Abbott sponsored and helped designed the study, and several study leaders consult for the company.
The idea of a dissolving stent is attractive, but "promise alone is not enough to make us unconditionally embrace this technology," Byrne wrote. A longer study underway now of 5,000 patients "will go a long way toward determining whether this promise will become a reality."
Being as good as a stent currently sold is all Absorb had to prove, said another study leader, Dr. Gregg Stone of Columbia University Medical Center.
"The question is what does it take to get it on the market?" he said. "No one expected superiority in the first year. We expect the real benefits of this technology to be when it dissolves, over several years" in terms of lower complication rates, he said.
The study lasted only a year; participants will be tracked longer to see how they fared when the stent dissolved. Previous studies showed the stent does dissolve as intended.
Phyllis Camp, a retired social worker from Pine Valley, Mississippi, was the first person in the U.S. to get the dissolving stent through the study in December 2012.
"What appealed to me is the fact it would allow my body to heal itself and I wouldn't have anything metal left behind. It seemed much more natural to support the artery till it could heal itself," she said.
Price could be a factor in how widely dissolving stents catch on. Abbott would not disclose Absorb's price and said it varies in dozens of countries. Others said dissolving stents cost more than conventional ones.
Earlier this month, the FDA approved the first stent whose drug-oozing coating dissolves over time, leaving behind just a metal scaffold. Extremely thin stents also are in testing, and results are due soon on a new stent that has tiny pores to release medicine rather than a coating that remains or goes away over time.
Source: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2015-10-dissolving-stent-heart-arteries-large.html
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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