The first release, from the first Free Burn, and Robot Heart's first ever burn without our founder. We bring you a unique set from Reza Safinia. An emotive soundtrack to Thursday's perfect fireball sunset performed from an overheating laptop perched in an ice cooler Radical self reliance. He suffered a sudden ruptured cerebral aneurysm while on a skiing holiday, and felt no pain in his passing. He was surrounded by family, friends and loved ones at the time.
Geo was a passionate innovator, entrepreneur, creator, and a community builder with a unique vision and a profound ability to bring people together to do extraordinary things. He is also survived by all of us who have been touched and inspired by Robot Heart and the magical tribe and extended family he brought together. No credit card required, unsubscribe at any time. Home Love Beats Gallery.
You have to bring it out here. In the sweet spot, listening to his sound system. Many people here still speak of Mueller in the present tense. They talk about his sense of humor, his ability to not just be creative but to execute on that creativity, his appreciation for communal effort. Everyone in our camp works," says Johnny Nitelife.
They talk of his ability to bring eccentric people from many places and lifestyles together under the Robot Heart banner, how the community he's formed doesn't just party together at Burning Man, but shows up for each others' weddings, births of children, group vacations. They talk of his enthusiasm for music, food, travel, his friends, family and life in general. Burridge recalls one Burning Man where Mueller had a full conversation with a cardboard cutout of himself, and the year Burridge was playing Pachanga Boys' "Time," a song Mueller loved so much that he took over the decks and played it on repeat — for an hour.
The camp also reduced its footprint this year due to BLM restrictions. Burridge wasn't initially planning to attend Free Burn, making a same-day decision to travel from Arizona to the playa to be with the Robot Heart family and to honor his friend. While several core Robot Heart members had to miss Free Burn due to pandemic-related travel restrictions, for those who could get to the desert, it was vital to show up, pay tribute and simply be together after the loss, particularly after the forced separation of lockdown, which for so many has been an excruciating time to mourn.
Within a few months Andersen was ready to test the device in animals, and on 1 May he implanted the first in a pig. But nobody was prepared to take the concept seriously — folding up a valve and then unfurling it inside the heart seemed wilfully eccentric — and it took him several years to find a journal willing to publish his research.
When his paper was finally published in , none of the major biotechnology firms showed any interest in developing the device. Andersen sold his patent and moved on to other things. But at the turn of the century there was a sudden explosion of interest in the idea of valve implantation via catheter. In France, another cardiologist was already working on doing the same for the aortic valve. Eventually, Cribier managed to raise the necessary funds for development and long-term testing, and by had a working prototype.
Rather than use an entire valve cut from a dead heart, as Andersen had, Cribier built one from bovine pericardium, mounted in a collapsible stainless-steel stent. Prototypes were implanted in sheep to test their durability: after two-and-a-half years, during which they opened and closed more than m times, the valves still worked perfectly.
Cribier was ready to test the device in humans, but his first patient could not be eligible for conventional surgical valve replacement, which is safe and highly effective: to test an unproven new procedure on such a patient would be to expose them to unnecessary risk. In early , he was introduced to a year-old man who was, in surgical terms, a hopeless case.
He had catastrophic aortic stenosis which had so weakened his heart that with each stroke it could pump less than a quarter of the normal volume of blood; in addition, the blood vessels of his extremities were ravaged by atherosclerosis, and he had chronic pancreatitis and lung cancer.
An initial attempt to open the stenotic valve using a simple balloon catheter failed, and a week after this treatment Cribier recorded in his notes that his patient was near death, with his heart barely functioning. But shortly afterwards complications arose, most seriously a deterioration in the condition of the blood vessels in his right leg, which had to be amputated 10 weeks later. Infection set in, and four months after the operation, he died.
He had not lived long — nobody expected him to — but the episode had proved the feasibility of the approach, with clear short-term benefit to the patient. When Cribier presented a video of the operation to colleagues they sat in stupefied silence, realising that they were watching something that would change the nature of heart surgery. When surgeons and cardiologists overcame their initial scepticism about TAVI they quickly realised that it opened up a vista of exciting new surgical possibilities.
As well as replacing diseased valves it is now also possible to repair them, using clever imitations of the techniques used by surgeons. The technology is still in its infancy, but many experts believe that this will eventually become the default option for valvular disease, making surgery increasingly rare.
While TAVI is impressive, there is one even more spectacular example of the capabilities of the catheter. Paediatric cardiologists at a few specialist centres have recently started using it to break the last taboo of heart surgery — operating on an unborn child.
Nowhere is the progress of cardiac surgery more stunning than in the field of congenital heart disease. The heart is especially prone to abnormal development in the womb, with a myriad of possible ways in which its structures can be distorted or transposed.
Over several decades, specialists have managed to find ways of taming most; but one that remains a significant challenge to even the best surgeon is hypoplastic left heart syndrome HLHS , in which the entire left side of the heart fails to develop properly. The ventricle and aorta are much smaller than they should be, and the mitral valve is either absent or undersized.
Until the early s this was a defect that killed babies within days of birth, but a sequence of complex palliative operations now makes it possible for many to live into adulthood. Because their left ventricle is incapable of propelling oxygenated blood into the body, babies born with HLHS can only survive if there is some communication between the pulmonary and systemic circulations, allowing the right ventricle to pump blood both to the lungs and to the rest of the body.
Some children with HLHS also have an atrial septal defect ASD , a persistent hole in the tissue between the atria of the heart which improves their chances of survival by increasing the amount of oxygenated blood that reaches the sole functioning pumping chamber.
When surgeons realised that this defect conferred a survival benefit in babies with HLHS, they began to create one artificially in those with an intact septum, usually a few hours after birth. But it was already too late: elevated blood pressure was causing permanent damage to the delicate vessels of the lungs while these babies still in the womb. The logical — albeit risky — response was to intervene even earlier. This reduced the pressures in the pulmonary circulation and hence limited the damage to the lungs; but the tissues of a growing foetus have a remarkable ability to repair themselves, and the artificially created hole would often heal within a few weeks.
Cardiologists needed to find a way of keeping it open until birth, when surgeons would be able to perform a more comprehensive repair. In September a couple from Virginia, Angela and Jay VanDerwerken, visited their local hospital for a routine antenatal scan.
They were devastated to learn that their unborn child had HLHS, and the prognosis was poor. The ultrasound pictures revealed an intact septum, making it likely that even before birth her lungs would be damaged beyond repair. Devastated, the VanDerwerkens returned home, where Angela researched the condition online. Although few hospitals offered any treatment for HLHS, she found several references to the Boston foetal cardiac intervention programme, the team of doctors that had pioneered the use of the balloon catheter during pregnancy.
A greying, softly spoken South African, Tworetzky explained that his team had recently developed a new procedure, but that it had never been tested on a patient. Currently, doctors keep heart pumping using a ventricular assist devices. The external pumps are attached to the body and help distribute blood when the heart can't function independently. However, it does come with a unique set of challenges. As blood is flowing through machinery, patients are required to take blood thinners to ensure clots don't develop.
In comparison, robotic hearts are built into the organ and help to support normal function without the need for blood thinners. The micro-machinery that rests on the heart is made from soft polymers which don't irritate or puncture the flesh. It also swaps traditional motors for pneumatically activated technology which is a much gentler and non-invasive way to manipulate the heart.
The device also features a rod that's inserted into the heart and anchors itself to the septum, which separates the upper and lower chambers of the heart. Once the device has been anchored into place the "soft" robot pumps the heart, while the rod actively pulls the septum wall. This simulate a squeezing motion which stimulates blood flow and replicates the motions of a beating of a heart.
The septum thickens during the contraction and moves inward into the respective ventricle. The team has successfully tested the robot heart on a live pig, with hopes to move forward with more animal trials in Universities play an important role in championing new technologies.
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