A father-and-son team won a patent this week for a tool to clear human arteries of plaque, a primary cause of heart disease.
The invention expands upon the popular technique known as balloon angioplasty. In that procedure, a physician inserts a deflated balloon catheter into the arteries and then inflates the balloon, The balloon then presses the plaque against the artery walls to open obstructions to blood flow. The approach is less traumatic than heart bypass surgery.
The new invention tries to remove the plaque. The inventors are Robert Fischell, a physicist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and his son, Dr. Timothy Fischell, a cardiologist at the Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, Calif.
The Fischells' catheter has a spinning head shaped like a tiny bullet with sharp edges pointing backward. The device pierces the blockage as it is fed into the artery. As the catheter is pulled back, its sharp edges cut plaque loose and pull it from the body.