When a patient needs a cardiac intervention, surgeons can choose to access the heart in one of two ways: open-heart surgery or a cardiac catheterization.

Open-heart surgery offers clear and direct access to the heart, but it also requires stopping the heart, draining the blood, and putting the patient on an external heart and lung machine. Catheterization—insertion of a thin, flexible tube through the patient’s groin and up into the still-beating heart—is less invasive. But it’s not suitable for very complicated situations, because it is hard to manipulate the heart tissue with catheter-based tools from such a far distance.

Both methods have been highly optimized, but each has its own risks, benefits and drawbacks. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a way to directly access the heart and maintain normal heart function and blood flow while repairs are performed?

Nikolay Vasilyev, MD, thought so. A scientist in the cardiac surgery research lab at Boston Children’s Hospital, led by Pedro del Nido, MD, Vasilyev has designed a platform technology that may revolutionize the way we conduct cardiac interventions. …