Researchers have developed a soft robotic sleeve for heart failure patients that mimics healthy cardiac muscles. A study published in the journal Science Translational Medicine explains that it acts like an artificial muscle by twisting and compressing the heart chambers.

About 26 million people worldwide were living with heart failure in 2014, according to a study published in the journal ESC Heart Failure. Most heart failure patients still have some function left, and the researchers hope the robotic sleeve will work well enough one day to restore those patients’ quality of life.

The researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard University and the National University of Ireland Galway have spent several years developing this mechanical alternative. They tested it on pig hearts and found that it can restore acutely failing hearts to 97 percent of their original cardiac output.
Ventricular assist devices have historically been used to sustain end-stage heart failure patients who are awaiting transplant. They compensate for the work of the ventricles with tubes that take blood out of the heart and rotors that power it into the bloodstream.

But the current generation of VADs directly expose a patient’s blood to artificial materials like tubing and rotors. As a result, the patient has to take blood thinning and anticoagulatory medications to tolerate the implants, which increases their risk of stroke by up to 20 percent.

Other cardiac sleeves have been developed in the past, but they operated against the normal curvature of the heart, which only helps with squeezing. However, with advancements in soft robotics, the new device can help with both squeezing and twisting.

In order to create a new device that doesn’t come into contact with blood, the researchers used soft pneumatic actuators placed around the heart to mimic the outer muscle layers of the heart. The actuators twist and compress the sleeve in a similar motion to the beating heart.

The device is tethered to an external pump that uses air to power the soft actuators. The actuators can be placed in different positions and the pressure of the actuators can increase or decrease depending on the patient’s condition.

"We can independently control portions of the device and adjust assistance to a patient's needs," Ellen Roche, the study’s first author, said in a statement. "I'm optimistic the soft robotic sleeve could potentially be used for short-term cardiac rehabilitation in addition to long-term therapy."

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