Word: lasering
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From here on the going gets dicier and, in terms of the future of heart treatment, more interesting. On the horizon, and closing fast, are experimental techniques--most immediately gene and laser therapies--that have the potential to make yesterday's miracles (bypasses and angioplasties) seem like rudimentary plumbing repairs. Remember: potential...
Gene therapy seems wondrous and, as a new form of intimate intervention in nature's business, vaguely disconcerting. The other major approach to angiogenesis--drilling tiny holes directly into the beating heart muscle with a laser--seems aggressively screwy. But the procedure (called transmyocardial revascularization) seems to work. And as violent as it sounds, it appears to be relatively safe...
...surgeon makes a small incision in the left side of the chest and exposes the left ventricle, the chamber that forces oxygenated blood into the arteries. While the heart pauses between beats and fills with blood, a laser is used to shoot a minuscule hole through the muscle. (Zapping the heart in synch minimizes potential fibrillation by keeping time with the heartbeats.) The 30 to 45 wounds on the outside of the heart close up almost instantly, with help from pressure by the surgeon's finger. But the channels created inside the muscle remain open--at least for a little...
...When lasers were first used for the treatment in the mid-'80s, researchers believed the channels remained open. Apparently not. It is now thought that the drilling provokes new blood-vessel growth where the laser burns a hole. (Others suggest the angina may be eased simply because the laser numbs pain-sensing nerves of the heart.) Scar tissue from the laser holes seems minimal...
Visiting the dentist may have just become easier. The FDA has approved Millennium, a laser-powered drill that uses a stream of water instead of metal blades to excavate tooth surfaces. The advantage: Millennium causes less pain than conventional drills, and it doesn't emit that hair-raising high-pitched whine...