Cooling therapy in healthcare

Intracoronary Cardiac Cooling

In previous years, LifeTec Group™ has been collaborating closely with the clinicians at Catharina Hospital and biomedical researchers at the Eindhoven Univerity of Technology in a project on intracoronary cooling as a therapy to improve patient treatments. In analogy to applying a coolpack after a sports injury, the concept of cooling the heart after acute coronary problems should help in preventing tissue swelling and reperfusion injury following coronary balloon angioplasty or stent placement. The PhysioHeart™ model proved a great platform to study how to instrument the heart and how to provide relatively cold fluids into the coronaries at desired locations such that very specific target temperatures could be obtained. When successful protocols were found for effective cooling and for safe application to patients, a clinical study was started by dr. Otterspoor and his team in the Catharina hospital. This study is not yet complete, but the early results are looking very promising!

Dokters van Morgen

The TV show "Dokters van Morgen" is about innovations in medical care. The next episode will be broadcasted on Wednesday December 16th at 21:30 on Dutch tv channel NPO1, and the PhysioHeart platform and the coronary cooling research that was performed is one of the topics featuring in this program.

PhysioHeart on TV

The focus of this particular episode is on the use of cooling as a therapy in clinical practice. As reported earlier, a camera crew visited one of the PhysioHeart experiments in the laboratory facilities at LifeTec Group to witness how the cardiac cooling therapy was tried and tested in collaboration with our team, and subsequently applied in patients in the hospital.

We are very proud that we are able to contribute to such medical innovations, by using our realistic R&D environment in preparation for the real application: improving patient care in the hospital.