E.M. Cosgriff-Hernandez, A. Post, M. Razavi, H. Zhang
The University of Texas at Austin,
United States
Keywords: conductive hydrogel, arrhythmia, electrophysiology, ablation
Summary:
By the age of 40, one in every four Americans will face the ordeal of a cardiac arrhythmia. Radiofrequency ablation remains the mainstay of cardiac rhythm management despite the high recurrence rate with roughly half of patients requiring redo procedures and life-threatening complications. In high-risk patients, an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) is used to deliver a depolarizing wavefront that captures enough tissue area to extinguish re-entrant wavefronts. However, life-saving defibrillation requires high energy that vastly exceeds the pain threshold and results in severe diminution of quality of life. This clinical challenge, combined with its staggering $6B economic footprint, signifies a clear and pressing need for safer and more effective technology for cardiac rhythm management. To address this pressing need, our cross-disciplinary team with expertise in material science, electrophysiology, and clinical practice developed a new conductive hydrogel platform. We have demonstrated that this conductive hydrogel 1) as a tissue interface for ablative catheters, limits steam pops and provides uniform ablative lesions; and 2) as an injectable hydrogel electrode, it normalizes conduction across scarred myocardium to provide a means for low-energy defibrillation. This conductive hydrogel platform is paving the way for medical device innovation to transform cardiac rhythm management.