Realheart's patent portfolio covers the following additional future products:
The sternal prosthesis is a new application of the same technique found in hip and knee prosthetics and can be used to fixate the sternum in a simple and secure way after open-chest surgery. Today, it is common practice to secure the divided sternum with metal wire when closing the chest. After surgery, patients may experience severe pain and difficulty moving their arms, as the sternal fixation wire does not allow enough flexibility. These complications can further prolong the healing process: bone healing for this technique is estimated to around six to eight weeks.
Realheart’s Sternal Prosthesis aims to stabilize the entire rib cage immediately after the operation to reduce the patient’s bedridden healing time. This allows the patient to become physically active sooner after surgery, which has been shown to improve the postoperative healing process and reduce the risk of common postoperative complications such as blood clots and pneumonia.
The patented pumping principle can be further developed to achieve a pulsating blood flow in heart lung machines, mitigating negative side effects of today’s continuous flow heart lung machines for vital organs such as the kidneys and liver. This would reduce the complication risk of long surgeries.
Realheart’s patent portfolio also covers the use of the unique pumping principle as a ventricular assist device. The RealVAD®️ has been assessed as a pulsatile ventricular assist device in an early proof of concept study.