Is it possible to survive 100% after a stroke? – NAU Review

IN Tim Becker laboratory, the “patient” lies on a surgical table and a blood clot lurks in a cerebral vessel. It’s a terrifying scenario, similar to stroke, one of the leading causes of death and disability in the United States.

But here’s the twist: the patient is not a real person, just a collection of tubes and pumps circulating fluid. Becker is not a surgeon – he is a mechanical engineer. Becker and his team intend to develop and test medical devices that can more effectively treat stroke patients in the critical hours after a stroke.

“Stroke is quite a large area of ​​research, and current treatments are not very good,” said Becker, who leads the project Laboratory of Bioengineering Devices at NAU. “The devices coming out today are evolving very rapidly, and we are on the ground floor of that process.”

He has been working in this space, both in the laboratory and in industry, since the beginning of his career. Now, in addition to innovation, Becker is training the next generation of medical device developers. More than a dozen graduate and undergraduate students from bioengineering, biology, physiotherapy, chemistry and materials science are working together to develop the devices and systems needed to test them. They graduate with hundreds of hours of hands-on experience, industry collaborations, journal article co-authors, patents, federal funding and job offers

It’s an exciting place.

The path to 100% effectiveness in stroke treatment

Becker’s lab works on medical devices used in both ischemic and hemorrhagic strokes. Ischemic strokes, which are caused by a blood clot in the brain, are treated by injecting the patient with a clot-busting drug or inserting a catheter that allows doctors to suck out the clot. Developed about a decade ago, the suction process is 50-60% effective – much higher than medication, but not high enough.

Becker and his students are developing suction devices that can capture the entire clot. Becker likened this procedure to trying to suck the top of a muffin into a tube – with enough suction, some of the muffin will get into the tube and it may be possible to suck it all in. However, luck plays a big role: it is often a bit lacking.

“We are working on a catheter with a tip that will adapt to the shape of the vessel and capture the entire clot, not just part of it,” Becker said. “Our clot would open up, grab the entire clot and suck it in on the first pass, rather than allowing pieces of it to float downstream and potentially cause another stroke. This can really increase the effectiveness of treatment.”

A hemorrhagic stroke occurs when an aneurysm in the brain ruptures. Currently, a patient after a hemorrhagic stroke has a 15% chance of survival. Aneurysms, if caught before they rupture, can be treated surgically; A coil is placed at the mouth of the aneurysm to strengthen the weakened vessel. A balloon is inserted into the vessel to hold the coil in place (using an adhesive-like material also developed in Becker’s lab). Problem? The blood vessel becomes blocked for about 10 minutes, preventing blood from reaching the brain.

Becker’s lab is developing a novel balloon mesh that would function like a balloon but would be porous, allowing blood to flow normally through the vessels and causing the vessel above the entrance to the aneurysm to heal. The team has built three prototypes of this material and plans to create two more.

Testing on simulated patients

The “patient” in Becker’s laboratory was carefully created to mimic a human. The “blood vessels” are 3D printed using a flexible material that responds to blood flow just like human vessels. “Blood” is a liquid with a mechanical composition similar to human blood that is moved through vessels by a pump system that can be programmed to mimic the heart of a child, adult, man or woman.R woman of different ages. (They jargon program it differT ethnic groups-manT.) Everything is connected to a computer that measures heart rate, blood pressure, blood flow and more.

The biohazard-free setup allows Becker and his team to tackle prototypes, test what works, what needs improvement, change variables – good old trial and error.

In February, Becker’s team conducted a four-hour video call with researchers from Harvard Medical School, testing various devices sent by Harvard. Doctors discovered that when the devices were placed in living patients, the patients did not respond as doctors expected. They wanted to know how to get these results, so Becker held up a camera to his simulated patient and they worked with the devices, observing the measurements on a computer screen.

ATTACKING racial and gender disparities in health outcomes

For the last 50 years, medical devices have been manufactured for the average white man. It turns out it doesn’t work – not only because of biological differences between genders and races, but also because the “average white person” is a medical myth. Every person’s body is different and for medical devices to be effective, they must be adapted to different body types.

Holly Berns, a Ph.D. bioengineering student is developing a prototype, called the ATTAC catheter, that is more adaptive — instead of one size, it will be one device that can be adjusted based on size. Having one device that can treat multiple body types is a cost-saving measure for hospitals that will also translate into better outcomes for stroke patients: currently the survival rate for men is around 60%, while women have a survival rate of around 30-45% .

Berns, who received a $500,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health, will graduate in about a year and hopes to take the ATTAC catheter through the development, testing and patent process and then put it into production for the site commercial.

“I joined this lab four years ago and right after that my partner at the time had a stroke,” she said. “Sitting with him in the hospital and knowing his history of stroke, it is unacceptable that we only have 60%. We can do better – we must do better.

Heidi Toth | NAU Communications
(928) 523-8737 | [email protected]