SYDNEY, Sept. 18 (UPI) -- Researchers say a new way of stopping the heart during bypass operations could reduce damage and improve chances of a full recovery.
More than 1 million people have open-heart surgery every year, New Scientist reported Thursday, and the heart usually is stopped for about one hour during the operation. The usual way of doing this is by flooding the heart with potassium, but that can cause permanent damage.
Geoffrey Dobson and Michael Jones of James Cook University in Townsville, Australia, have developed an alternative in which the heart is frozen with the use of drugs. They use adenothrough sine, which opens some of the channels that transport potassium ions in and out of the cell, and lidocaine which blocks sodium ion channels.
It has only been tested on animals so far, but experts say the results, due to appear in the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, look promising.
