Must heart surgury cost an arm or a leg?

Heart bypass surgeries now require the use of veins from the leg to replace damaged blood vessels. However, doctors soon could be using artificial blood vessels actually grown in the lab to help save half a million lives a year. This is important because it's not always a simple matter to get replacement arteries for heart bypass from the patient, and even when it is possible to harvest patient arteries, other complications can result in a failed transplant. What's really been needed is an "off the shelf" supply of blood vessels.

The secret?… Use a nanotechnology developed by Gary Bowlin and other Virginia Commonwealth University researchers.

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