CorAssist: Helping Weak Hearts Become Strong (Israel)

Of all the muscles in your body, your heart is probably the most valuable. Without this muscle, it would be nearly impossible for your body to pump the 10 pints (or 1 1/4 gallons) of blood that circulate throughout your veins.

But what happens after your heart weakens through disease or from a heart attack? While there are some "natural ways " for patients to help strengthen their favorite muscle, CorAssist has developed a unique method for treating heart failure by targeting a certain muscle that other technologies may overlook.

(Israel 21^st Century) While some devices to treat systolic heart failure (SHF) are already in clinical trials, no devices to treat diastolic heart failure (DHF) are available. CorAssist's solution presents the first device-based approach to treat DHF, being a one-of-its-kind product in the market.

After a heart attack, or with heart muscle disease due to obesity and other conditions such as genetic defects, the heart muscles have a difficult time squeezing blood to the body (the systolic phase), and then back again into the heart (the diastolic phase). CorAssist is focusing on the second condition - DHF - where a person's heart inadequately relaxes, and is impaired in its capability to return blood from the body back to the heart. [...]

CorAssist's main product is the ImCardia, which works from outside the heart. It's a self-expanding device that attaches to the external surface of the left ventricle. When the heart muscle squeezes, energy is loaded into the device, which absorbs this energy, and releases it to the left ventricle in the diastolic phase. This keeps the muscles elastic, giving it a small "work out" to improve heart health.

While this new med-tech is promising, ImCardia is still in the early experimental stages, as it only has been tested on three people (all which have been successful according to Israel 21^st Century).

CorAssist is currently seeking to conduct a much larger trial, and while they have not mentioned any plans of reaching across the Mediterranean (towards Europe), they do seem eager to enter within the US market.

(Image Credit: Yale University)

Want more good news about Israel?

Enter your email address below to subscribe!

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

Have a feed reader? Subscribe via RSS or Atom.