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95 points lnyan | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.206s | source
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echoangle ◴[] No.43618988[source]
Does anyone know how something like this is injected? It has to be close to the heart so it’s probably not going into the bloodstream. And you can’t really inject something precisely into the heart itself while it is pumping, right? And do you just aim by hand or is there some apparatus that does the alignment so you hit a specific location and depth?
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1. throwup238 ◴[] No.43619314[source]
I don’t know how exactly this one will be done specifically but I have a (much larger) passive implant that was inserted via a catheter in a vein in my leg and guided up to my atrium, with an endoscope down my throat to see it as it was positioned. My atrial septal defect occluder was not only precisely positioned inside my heart but unwrapped from a shape that can fit down a vein to a stacked flat disc shape that clamps on two side of the heart wall to hold itself in place.

This technique is being expanded to robotic catheters that can carry out the precise surgery automatically and there are the simpler “deployable stabilization devices” that are used to stabilize the heart muscle. If this is really small enough to be injected, it should work with either of those methods rather noninvasively.