12-11-2012, 01:35 PM
NANOROBOTS SUBSTITUTES FOR PRESENT HEART SURGERIES
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ABSTRACT
In today’s fast world, man is in a situation where he has to compete against machines. Due to this stress of a mechanical life, the human body is subjected to various levels of trauma. The organ most affected is the heart. Heart attacks are becoming so common now a days. The percentage of people affected is increasing by the day. This heart attack is mainly caused due to improper diet with excessive cholesterols and lack of proper exercise to burn calories, which leads to blocks in the arteries. The present method of treatment- the bypass surgery or the angioplasty, though effective, may be considered outdated in today’s technological age.Nanorobots are tiny nanoscale devices that may be used to perform a variety of tasks very accurately and in lesser time. Nanotechnology is the cutting edge of future technology and is vastly directed towards medical applications. This paper throws light on one possible application of these nanorobots in the human body, where they may be employed to remove heart blocks more effectively and accurately, in lesser time causing no pain what so ever. This nanotechnology will be the driver for the future technologies of today’s “shrinking world”.
INTRODUCTION
Heart blocks are becoming one of the major diseases among the people of today’s world. With a variety of reasons for occurrence, ranging from lack of exercise to smoking and drinking, this has emerged as the most wide spread disease ever. These heart blocks are caused due to a variety of reasons. Current diagnostic measures include a lot of painful processes like the Angiogram. The treatment for the block is also extremely dangerous, time consuming and painful. Angioplasty, though having a high success rate, is still old fashioned. Today’s technology promises a lot more than the insertion of a thin tube into your blood vessels. Nanorobots can be effectively used in this process of curing heart blocks. This paper discusses the causes of heart blocks, the current process of diagnosis and therapy. Later this paper throws light on the novel idea of curing these heart blocks using nanorobots- a technology just a few years away from implementation. This paper views the problem on a purely theoretical and imaginative approach.
ANGIOGRAM
The LDL’s on further deposition form a lump and close in on the diameter of the blood vessel. So as the concentration increases the diameter of the blood vessel decreases.Hence blood transportation to or from the heart is hindered. The intensity of this problem is measured by a method known as Angiogram.. Here a small tube of diameter of about a few micrometer with a catheter at the end is used. This is introduced into the veins at the thigh and upto the pericardium.This catheter injects a radioactive fluid into the blood stream, the flow of which is monitored by a continuous X-ray. When this fluid flows through the block, there will be a contraction in the thickness of the fluid line monitored through the X-ray. This
contraction indicates the location of the block. Once the block has been located, it is
removed by a method known as Angioplasty.
ANGIOPLASTY
In this method the end of the catheter has a deflated balloon. This balloon is positioned under the block and it is inflated, so that the block bursts, and is carried away through the blood stream. In order to prevent the recursion of the block, the blocked area is covered with a one-way inflatable metal cylinder, that is attached on the outside of the balloon. As the balloon is inflated, the cylinder attains shape, and gets locked on attaining maximum expansibility. This method is known as ‘balloon angioplasty’
THE ACTUAL PROCESS
The three types of nanorobots needed for the process, are suspended in a liquid matrix and injected into blood vessels of the patient. Immediately the acoustic sensors in the sensor robots get activated and begin navigating the army of robots through the blood stream to the pericardium. Simultaneously, the smart sensors present in the sensor robots, get activated and form a closed ad-hoc network connecting all the robots. This is very essential in order to guide all the nanorobots to the desired location. The sensor robots perform the most sophisticated type of diagnosis known, i.e. diagnosis from the inside of the human body. These sensors , on reaching the periphery of the heart, scan the pericardial vessels, for blocks and locate the spot exactly. The pressure sensors mounted on the sensor robots, scan the blood vessels for variations in the blood pressure.
CONCLUSION
Nanotechnology is truly a vast field of research and study, bound only by the limits of human imagination. Eventhough this may seem to most of them like a fairy tale, the days of implementation of these devices are not far off. The machines needed to fabricate these nanorobots are yet to be visualized. Hence these nanorobots are still out of production although having passed the drawing board stage long back. The human mind will one day make this extremely interesting vision, a reality. This field however at present, in its infancy stages, just like aviation was, during the early 1900’s. Let us hope that this technology also will one day, become as successful and dominating like aviation today.