Personalized Centrifuge
In Russia, they came up with how to update diseased vessels with the help of gravity
A unique method of treating ischemia and other diseases associated with vascular pathologies was created by scientists of Samara State Medical University (SamSMU) and Samara National Research University named after academician S. P. Korolev. According to the authors, the technique allows not only to improve the condition of blood vessels, but even to form new ones instead of the affected ones. The results are published in the collection of the International Federation of Biomedical Engineering (Akulov et al., Influence of Artificial Microgravity on Human Arterial Vessels).
Ischemic vascular disease of the lower extremities, especially common among the elderly, is usually accompanied by severe pain. In most cases, its treatment is possible only through complex surgical intervention.
Since the end of the 80s of the XX century, scientists of SamSMU have been developing the idea of treatment with artificial gravity created on a short-radius centrifuge. Inside it, the patient is fixed in a supine position so that the axis of rotation of the device is located in the head area. Under the action of centrifugal forces, blood flows to the legs, saturating not only the main channel of the vessel, but also its branches – the so-called collaterals.
Regular "training" of collaterals on a centrifuge can lead not only to their expansion, which compensates for the narrowing of the main channel, but, as scientists explained, even to the formation of a new healthy vessel. According to them, more than 3,500 successful tests have already been conducted to date.
Specialists of SamSMU and Samara University managed to improve the method by developing and embedding a system of wireless registration of biomedical signals of the body into the centrifuge. According to scientists, this provides an individual approach to each patient, which significantly increases the effectiveness of procedures.
"Multiparametric assessment of the state of the vascular system occurs due to the reading of electrocardiographic and photoplethysmographic signals. Continuous monitoring allows you to set the optimal rotation frequency of the centrifuge," explained Sergey Akulov, associate professor of the Department of Laser and Biotechnical Systems at Samara University.
According to scientists, the approach is extremely useful not only in the treatment of vascular diseases, but also in traumatology and orthopedics, as well as as part of the comprehensive treatment of hypertension, erectile dysfunction, inflammation of the uterine appendages and a number of other pathologies.
"The course of treatment consists of 10-15 sessions, the duration of the procedure is from seven to 15 minutes. The positive effect lasts up to six months, then it can be repeated. The method has a number of contraindications, but individual adjustment of the procedure allows us to treat citizens even at the age of ninety – we have such experience," said the head of the Department of Surgical Diseases No. 1 of SamSMU, Professor Igor Makarov.
Short–radius centrifuges are used in large research centers for the training of astronauts, but, as explained by the scientists of SamSMU, it is quite possible to install them in any medical institution - this requires only a room three to four meters in diameter.
The Center of Gravity Therapy has been working in the Clinics of SamSMU since 2003. In 2006, for the creation of gravity therapy, recognized as a new direction in medicine, a team of scientists led by Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Gennady Kotelnikov received the award of the Government of the Russian Federation.
The research team plans to further improve the effectiveness of therapy by accumulating and clarifying data on different age groups of patients.
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