Openmind is honored to catch the attention of experts, who are not directly engaged with the project, and share their opinions and ideas.
Their experience and credibility shed new light on our goals and achievements.
Here follows the interview with:
Giuseppe Augello
Chief of Electrophysiology and Cardiac Pacing Unit – Istituto Clinico Città Studi, Milan, Italy
Dr Augello, cardiovascular diseases are still the number one cause of death globally. At the same time, more and more people survive heart attacks and strokes due to minimally invasive methods, such as stenting, valve replacement and resolving aneurysms. As an expert, how do you evaluate the importance of minimally invasive surgery in modern medicine? And more specifically, how do you evaluate the potentialities of the OPENMIND project?
Of course, mini- or non-invasive procedures to treat heart disease are expanding year by year in every field: treatment of coronary artery diseases with stenting; treatment of peripheral vascular diseases with angioplasty and stenting in every district, including cerebral arteries, treatment of heart failures with valve “repair” or replacement, or with different kinds of cardiac stimulation; treatment of atrial fibrillation and cardiac arrhythmias with catheter ablation; occlusion of part of the heart where thrombus can form and develop; insertion of totally self-contained intracardiac pacemakers, etc. In the future, invasive surgery will remain a secondary option for patients who cannot be treated with non-invasive procedure.
Openmind project is appealing as, in the future, real-time MRI will be able to guide many of these procedures to safely and effectively improve their outcome. Indeed, MRI is the best way to image the cardiovascular system in general and the heart in particular. Finding new materials compatible with MRI to develop cardiac devices, wires, stents, balloons, catheters and so on will be the future of MRI-guided surgery.
