The engineer who invented a fix for his own heart condition

Tal Golesworthy has the inherited condition Marfan syndrome. Symptoms include, poor eyesight , very long limbs – people with Marfan’s are usually very tall, and also a heart condition.

As his own heart problems developed, Tal became more and more concerned about the major surgery that he might need. He was facing a life-changing operation that he really didn’t want.

For people with Marfan’s the aortic root, the first bit of pipework leaving the heart, stretches and deforms. This can lead to a fatal rupture.

Treatment usually involves replacing the root with a synthetic pipe and replacing heart valves with mechanical ones, patients also need to take drugs for the rest of their lives and avoid strenuous activities.

Tal says he was a coward and as an active person didn’t want his life to be restricted. Determined to avoid that operation the British engineer spent the next 4 years developing an alternative. He called it PEARS (personalised external aortic root support) – a tailor-made mesh to stitch around the root to stop it from expanding.

The photo of Tal shows him holding a three- dimensional model of his own aortic root. He is also wearing a T-shirt picturing the model which looks a bit like a fat curved sausage bulging at one end and open at the other.

In the treatment an exact model of the patients’ aortic root is produced using medical scans; an individual mesh support is then tailor made to fit.

Tal became the first patient to receive the device 22 years ago, but also wanted others to benefit. He threw himself into efforts to make the treatment more widely available, setting up a company to manufacture the device, but it was soon bankrupt as the medical establishment was not so interested in Tal’s innovation. He says the slow progress took a huge toll on his mental health and if he’d know at the time how difficult it would become, he may have never have pursued the idea . However, today while conventional heart surgery is still the dominant treatment for his condition, a growing number of centres worldwide offer Tal’s invention as an alternative.