A non-surgical suturing strategy for rapid cardiac hemostasis

As the central organ of the human body, once the heart is damaged, it will cause devastating damage to the circulation system of the whole body, often leading to rapid death. Currently, the only treatment option to stop bleeding in penetrating cardiac injuries is surgical suturing, which is extremely complex and risky. In addition, it is difficult to implement this kind of treatment in battlefields with poor medical conditions. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop an effective cardiac hemostasis strategy. In this work, we propose a two-step hemostasis strategy that can effectively stop bleeding for penetrating heart injuries. That is, cardiac hemostatic plug (CHP) is made from the nanocomposite (polylactic acid/gelatin/absorbable hemostatic particles, PLA/GEL/AHP) with high biosafety, excellent hemostatic performance, and degradability which is used to block cardiac bleeding, and then wound surface is sealed by in-situ electrospun medical glue fibers (N-octyl-2-cyanoacrylate, interfacial toughness: 221 ± 23 J·m⁻²), thus completing cardiac hemostasis (porcine heart with 1 cm diameter penetrating wound). The hemostasis process is simple and quick (< 2 min). In addition, it is worth mentioning that we have also proposed a new composite method based on solution blow spinning that is suitable for doping various functional particles, and the PLA/GEL/AHP composite nanofiber membrane prepared by this method is also a promising hemostatic material.