Laser Pacemaker To Use Pulses Of Light For Stimulation

Today as there has been a revolution in every field of technology it has extended its horizons to the medical field also. No area of the medical field is untouched. One such area is the cardiology. Recent studies have found that pulses of laser can force a living embryo’s heart to beat. At Case Western Reserve University, in Cleveland, and Vanderbilt University, in Nashville the biomedical engineers used this very technique. A laser beam of 1.875 micrometer wavelength was used to force the embryo’s heart to beat. This is exactly how they proved that the pace of the organ can be controlled by the infra red light.

After proving this the engineers are trying to study the fact that how different heart rates can create genetic defects and can lead to heart failure. The engineers put a laser pacemaker besides the heart of a 3 to 4 day old embryo whose heart is not even developed like the proper 4 chambered mammalian heart. Only one pulsing cardiac tube is developed and that is very sensitive to the patterns of blood flow. By placing the pace maker they controlled the heart beats which practically means they changed the pattern of blood flow in such a way that minimum stress is experienced by the cardiac walls. Now isn’t this amazing?

Michael Jenkins a biomedical engineer said that when he tried to pass current to stimulate a tissue, it would go every where stimulating a larger part than required. But with optical beam theoretically, we can stimulate even a small cell without causing any instantaneous damage to the tissue. Electric current tends to kill some of the necessary cells too. With the advent of this technology for the embryos the engineers wish to make an optical pacemaker for human beings also. Some obstacles in this process are that the mechanism by which the pulses of laser control the heart beats is not completely understood. Furthermore, the water molecules in the heart tend to absorb the photons thereby increasing the temperature in the nearby area. Sodium ions cross the cell membrane due to the temperature gradients in the cell which produces a voltage spike. This contracts the cell.

This method is easy because it directly uses the water molecules for stimulation rather than using the DNA. With the increasing number of heart diseases now a days, this technology will be a boon for the stressed out masses suffering from heart diseases.