Sound waves crack the calcium: a kidney-stone trick clears the way for heart stents

Hardened calcium is one of the trickiest obstacles in heart care: it builds up inside the coronary arteries, narrows them, and can stop a stent — the tiny mesh tube doctors use to hold an artery open — from expanding properly. Abbott's investigational SonicForce system borrows an idea from kidney-stone treatment, using gentle sound-wave pulses from a balloon catheter to crack that calcium first. In the TECTONIC study of 335 patients with severe calcium buildup at 40 USA sites, the approach worked in 97% of procedures, and after 30 days only 0.3% of patients had a problem at the treated spot. The results were presented at the TCT cardiology conference in San Diego and published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Cardiovascular Interventions. The device is still investigational and not yet approved for general use.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: tech innovation