Research
Patients who receive stem cell treatment by coronary artery injections of stem cells derived from their own bone marrow after a myocardial infarction (MI) show improvements in left ventricular ejection fraction and end-diastolic volume not seen with placebo. The larger the initial infarct size, the greater the effect of the infusion. Clinical trials of progenitor cell infusion as a treatment approach to ST elevation MI are proceeding.
There are currently three biomaterial and tissue engineering approaches for the treatment of post-MI conditions, but these are in an even earlier stage of medical research. Many questions and issues must be addressed before they can be applied to patients. The first involves polymeric left ventricular restraints in the prevention of heart failure. The second utilizes in vitro engineered cardiac tissue, which is subsequently implanted in vivo. The final approach entails injecting cells and/or a scaffold into the myocardium to create in situ engineered cardiac tissue.
Read more about this topic: Myocardial Infarction
Famous quotes containing the word research:
“Feeling that you have to be the perfect parent places a tremendous and completely unnecessary burden on you. If we’ve learned anything from the past half-century’s research on child development, it’s that children are remarkably resilient. You can make lots of mistakes and still wind up with great kids.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“I did my research and decided I just had to live it.”
—Karina O’Malley, U.S. sociologist and educator. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A5 (September 16, 1992)
“Our science has become terrible, our research dangerous, our findings deadly. We physicists have to make peace with reality. Reality is not as strong as we are. We will ruin reality.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)