Micro robot developed to end heart surgeries: Magnetic robots given intravenously reduce 6-week treatment to 1 hour

In the world of medicine, surgical robotics and cardiology, a bio-engineering achievement has been achieved that will revolutionize the treatment of life-threatening heart diseases. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University in the US have designed steerable "millirobots" that are as wide as a pencil tip and as long as a grain of rice. According to the research published in the journal Advanced Materials Technologies, the developed robots provide pinpoint treatment in cases of endocarditis, a fatal heart tissue infection, and cancerous tumor foci.

TREATMENT WITHOUT SURGERY AND WITHOUT BLOOD LOSS: THE NEEDLE MODULE IS CLOCKED ON THE HEART

In endocarditis, which affects 50 thousand people every year in the USA, antibiotics given intravenously could not reach the heart because they were diluted in the blood, and patients had to undergo extremely risky open heart surgeries.

In the system developed under the leadership of Johns Hopkins University experts Axel Krieger and Anuruddha Bhattacharjee, robots work in pairs. The first robot, called the needle module, is injected intravenously and docked to the infected tissue of the beating heart like a spacecraft. The second robot carrying medicine comes to this station and deposits high doses of antibiotics directly into the diseased tissue.

IT DOES NOT CARRY AN MOTOR OR BATTERY: IT IS MANAGED FROM THE EXTERNAL THROUGH MR LOGIC

The developed microrobots do not contain any batteries, motors or cables. Robots are guided wirelessly from outside the body with millimetric precision, using an external electromagnetic coil system similar to MRI (Magnetic Resonance) devices.

Thanks to the needle module remaining fixed in the heart, the drug module can be taken out of the body and filled, and repeat doses can be administered safely. Tests conducted on pig hearts and simulated blood flow models proved that the robots reached the target autonomously.

6 WEEKS TREATMENT PROCESS IS REDUCED TO 1 HOUR

Technology, which completely eliminates the risk of open heart surgery, also provides huge savings in treatment times. Heavy intravenous antibiotic courses, which normally take 4 to 6 weeks, can be completed in a single session of just 10 minutes to 1 hour, thanks to the precise release of micro robots.

Experts declared that this technology, defined as the new frontier of medical robotics, will soon be used to deliver targeted chemotherapy drugs to metastasized cancer tumors.