Cardiac surgeries in which there has to be access to the heart involve cutting of the pericardium - a membranous sack which separates the heart from the chest walls.  Once the surgery is complete, the chest cavity is closed leaving a split in the pericardium.  During the healing process the flaps of the pericardium adhere (scar down) to the chest wall of the heart.  These adhesions occur in 100% of the cases and are a serious risk factor when there is a need for repeated surgeries.  There is now an increasing number of repeat surgeries.

          We have developed an approach to prevent these adhesions based on our prior knowledge and experience with tissue engineering.  The Pericardial Anti-Adhesion Patch (PAP) will be made using normal human dermal fibroblast cells and collagen type I gel.  The mix will be incubated in the proprietary media which will stimulate the cells to adapt and condense the collagen gel into a membrane-like tissue.  Another proprietary solution will be used to kill the cells and flush out all of the biological material which could cause inflammation.  PAP will then be used to close the cut in the pericardium rather like repairing an inner tube of a tire.

          In preliminary experiments using a dog model, the prototype PAP was able to prevent formation of the adhesion.

©Cardiovascular Research Institute, February 2000
An Institute of Discovery at the University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth