Nanostructures display unique mechanical, electrical, chemical, and optical properties. Understanding and controlling such properties is challenging, but harnessing them will provide exciting new opportunities for research, diagnosis, treatment, and management of heart, lung, blood, and sleep (HLBS) disorders.

Nanotechnology will offer the tools to explore the frontiers of medical science at cellular level. It can provide novel techniques in the treatment of a multitude of diseases, including cardiovascular disorders. Richard Feynman, the Winner of Nobel Prize in Physics, was a pioneer in the area of nanotechnology. In his 1959 speech: “There is plenty of room at the bottom”, he emphasized the role of nanotechnology in cardiac sciences and envisioned the potential applications of nanotechnology in cardiovascular medicine.

Tools offered by nanotechnology in medical and in particular cardiac sciences are in areas of diagnosis, imaging, and tissue engineering. Applying the methods of nanotechnology, has offered insight into the different potential benefits of nanotechnology in cardiovascular sciences. Although the benefits of nanotechnology transcend all specialties of medicine, one of the important applications of nanomedicine is in the area of cardiovascular sciences.

Design and Development of Miniature Surgical Instruments
Over 13 million people in the US have coronary heart disease (CHD). Surgical treatment is one of the optimum modes of management of this disease when medical and other interventional methods have failed. Traditional surgical procedures involve opening of the chest through the sternum and connecting the patient to a cardiopulmonary bypass machine and arresting the heart. The different surgical techniques are then performed on the arrested heart. These techniques, however, can lead to additional morbidity in that they can provoke central nervous system (CNS) disturbances and gastrointestinal complications in a few patients.

These complications multiply in obese and elderly patients. Minimally invasive cardiac surgery offers hope for patients afflicted with cardiac disease and in whom conventional open heart procedures would add considerable morbidity. Nanoscience provides the technology to design and develop newer cardiac instruments that are not only smaller in size but also more effective.

Robotic surgical systems are being developed to provide surgeons with unprecedented control over instruments that offer precision. This is particularly useful for minimally invasive cardiac surgery. Instead of manipulating surgical instruments manually, surgeons move joystick handles on a control console to maneuver robot arms containing miniature instruments that are inserted into ports in the patient.The surgeon’s movements transform large motions on the remote controls into miniature movements on the robot arms to greatly improve mechanical precision and safety. The other vital application of nanotechnology in relation to medical research and diagnostics are nanorobots. Nanorobots, operating in the human body, could monitor levels of different compounds and record the information in the internal memory.They could be rapidly used in the examination of a given tissue, surveying its biomechanical and histometrical features in greater detail. Just as biotechnology extends the range and efficacy of treatment options available from nanomaterials, the advent of molecular nanotechnology will again expand enormously the effectiveness, comfort and speed of future medical treatments while at the same time significantly reducing their risk, cost, and invasiveness.