Tiny pacemakers offer hope for newborn babies with heart defects

Tiny dissolvable pacemakers have been created to treat babies born with congenital heart defects detected in the womb.

The device, smaller than a grain of rice, can be injected into the newborn’s body to support his or her heartbeat without the need for additional surgery.

According to the Department of Health and Social Care, 567 babies deemed to have a congenital malformation of the cardiovascular system were aborted in England and Wales in 2022, the latest year for which figures are available.

Good news for babies

One of device’s developers, Igor Efimov, a cardiologist at Northwestern University in Illinois, commented: “Our major motivation was children. About 1 per cent are born with congenital heart defects. The good news is that these children only need temporary pacing after a surgery. In about seven days or so, most patients’ hearts will self-repair.”

He added: “But those seven days are absolutely critical. Now, we can place this tiny pacemaker on a child’s heart and stimulate it with a soft, gentle, wearable device. And no additional surgery is necessary to remove it.”

Bioelectronics pioneer and lead developer of the device John Rogers explained: “By minimising the size, we dramatically simplify the implantation procedures, we reduce trauma and risk to the patient, and, with the dissolvable nature of the device, we eliminate any need for secondary surgical extraction procedures.”