Future-proofing the human heart

A HUNDRED years ago, if one were to bet between Man landing on the moon or being able to successfully treat heart disease in the coming era, most would have backed our ability to treat the heart: Jules Verne's 1865 fantasy of "sending man to the moon in a projectile" would have remained just that.

Things turned out somewhat differently. When Neil Armstrong took his "one small step for man" in 1969, the discipline of coronary angioplasty was almost a decade away, implantable cardiac defibrillators would take about 15 more years to be approved, the first permanent artificial heart would be used only in 1982 and mechanical heart valves for babies wouldn't be available for almost 50 years. We walked on the moon but were many miles away from effectively tackling heart disease.

While dealing with an ever-pulsating four-chambered pump isn't the same as flying through (roughly) 375,000 kilometres of cold, unforgiving space, finding ways to treat complications of the human heart is perhaps the medical equivalent of the moon landing - complex, highly technical and fraught with the risk of failure.