Soft and Adhesive Cardiac Patch for Electrophysiological and Contraction Measurement

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Materials Science
• Cardiology

Background:

• Epicardial patches are used for real-time heart monitoring.
• Existing patches often have high modulus, leading to poor conformability and potential cardiac function limitations.
• A need exists for soft, adhesive cardiac patches that mimic native heart tissue properties.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop an ultrasoft and adhesive epicardial electronic patch.
• To achieve high conformability to the beating heart surface.
• To enable simultaneous monitoring of electrophysiological activities and myocardial contraction force.

Main Methods:

• Fabrication of an ultrasoft cardiac patch using a multi-material assembly process.
• Characterization of the patch's Young's modulus (∼ 65 kPa) and tissue adhesion (∼ 27 N m⁻¹).
• Utilizing tannic acid for hydrogen bonding and carboxyl groups for covalent binding to enhance adhesion.

Main Results:

• The developed patch exhibits a low Young's modulus, closely matching that of the heart.
• The patch demonstrates favorable tissue-adhesion properties.
• The patch successfully recorded epicardial electrophysiological activities and measured myocardial contraction force.

Conclusions:

• The ultrasoft and adhesive cardiac patch offers high conformability to the beating heart.
• This patch provides a novel monitoring approach for heart diseases by measuring both electrical activity and mechanical function.
• The epicardial electronic patch shows significant potential for applications in diagnosing conditions like ischemic heart disease.