Tools from scratch

摘要

Nikolay Vasilyev has a bold aim: he wants to improve surgery performed inside a beating heart. Patients have fewer complications when the heart is not stopped during surgery ― but manipulating surgical tools through a catheter inside a moving organ can be rather tricky. So Vasilyev, a cardiac surgeon at Boston Children's Hospital in Massachusetts, and his colleagues developed a device they call a cardioport. The first version consisted of a white plastic tube with a clear dome on one end to push blood out of the way. Doctors could insert all sorts of surgical instruments through the short, stiff tube, and hold them in place. They could put an endoscope into the dome to image the area. Valves prevented air from leaking into the heart and blood from leaking out.