The right scaffold can improve deteriorating eyesight.
If a heart valve stops working, it’s usually replaced. One made from animal tissue might only last a decade. Metal varieties require patients to take medication all their lives.
But, according to an English research team, there is another way. Banking on the body’s powers of regeneration, the team has developed a heart valve scaffold made from a polymer that draws in the body’s cells from the bloodstream.
Over time new tissue and nerves are generated around the polymer. Coincidentally, it is gradually broken down by the body, but in tests the new natural valve itself remained intact.
Some pacemakers are powered by users’ heartbeats, or dissolve having fulfilled their function.
