Female doctor 10 years of searching for stitches of heart surgery

Dr. Maria Pereira (France) spent 10 years looking for a safe, flexible material to replace stitches in heart surgery.

According to Time, wherever Maria Pereira came to these days like her office in Paris, a medical conference in Boston or returning to visit a house in Portugal, the separation was a small glue jar. This pretty little potion, if lucky, can contain a solution to the oldest problem in heart surgery is how to heal the wounds and holes without harming the body.

Ancient Egyptians and Greeks had faced the same dilemma. They chose to use self-digesting catgut threads derived from natural fibers or silk to sew the incisions. Modern doctors use more sophisticated techniques to sew wounds but it still has the risk of infection, irritation or bad scars.

Female doctor heavy heart surgery.(Photo: TP).

Pereira, a female doctor, leads the research team at Gecko Biomedical, a Paris-based medical equipment company, cherishing the desire to change this situation. The 30-year-old woman was charming, grew up in the city of Leiria, Portugal and moved to Paris in October 2013 to pursue her passion for studying heart surgery techniques.

Female doctor shared: "Innovation in science is the key to improving people's lives". Gecko ended the first round of funding with a fund of $ 11 million to conduct research on suturing heart surgery to minimize the impact on the patient's body.

Pereira's trip began more than seven years ago, when she was awarded a scholarship from the Portuguese MIT Program to study for a doctorate in biotechnology in Boston. Jeff Karp, former supervisor of the study, said: "From the first day, Maria aggressively expressed her desire to make a change in surgical medicine. Her passion for learning and the desire to change the world is dynamic. the force for her to study better and advance in the field of research than anyone I know. '

Dr. Maria Pereira at the laboratory.(Photo: Time).

There is a sad fact, the proportion of nearly one in 100 babies born with congenital heart defects and that is the leading cause of infant mortality in the United States. In 2009, Children's Hospital Boston chose Pereira to lead the study of surgical stitch replacement methods to treat congenital heart defects. The baby's heart is born about the size of a fist, but is the time when heart defects need to be treated early. Because, as children get older, more complicated heart surgeries with more risks.

The goal that Pereira pursues day and night is to develop a glue that can stick to the harshest environment of the body as the heart. This special agency acts as a pump described by the female doctor as " a blood storm" that beats 60 times a minute to bring blood to the body. The glue can bind in this constantly changing wet condition, must be flexible to expand and contract simultaneously with each heartbeat, biodegradable and especially non-toxic. In 2012, Pereira designed a material that meets all of those criteria, plus an advantage that the glue adheres to the position that the doctor lightens up when needed to help them control the operation better.

Within a year, Pereira's group produced the amount of glue into an industrial scale for widespread use. Previously the starting point of the group was 5 grams in the lab. The dream of a beautiful female doctor is to make a revolution in modern surgery. With her tireless efforts, she and her colleagues are gradually turning laboratory studies into reality.