Flabby heart keeps pumping with squeeze from robotic sleeve

WASHINGTON – Scientists are developing a robotic sleeve that can encase a flabby diseased heart and gently squeeze to keep it pumping. So far it has been tested only in animals, improving blood flow in pigs. But this "soft robotic" device mimics the natural movements of a beating heart, a strategy for next-generation treatments of deadly heart failure. The key: A team from Harvard University and Boston Children's Hospital wound artificial muscles into the thin silicone sleeve, so that it alternately compresses, twists and relaxes in synchrony with the heart tissue underneath. It's a dramatically different approach than today's therapies and, if it eventually is proven in people, it might offer a new alternative to heart transplants or maybe even aid in recovery.