Cardiogenic shock is one of the most lethal medical emergencies, with mortality rates ranging between 50% and 90% if treatment is not administered quickly and effectively. This event occurs when the heart loses its ability to pump sufficient blood to maintain vital organs.

“If a patient arrives at the hospital with cardiogenic shock, they have a death probability of more than 50%. It’s like flipping a coin,” said Arvind Bhimaraj, a specialist in cardiology at Houston Methodist Hospital in Texas.

This medical emergency often creates a deadly vicious cycle. When the heart fails, the body tries to compensate by constricting blood vessels to maintain blood pressure. However, this increases the resistance that the weakened heart must overcome, worsening its function.

“By increasing resistance, we’re also going to increase the workload on the heart,” explained Vicente Jiménez Franco, clinical leader of the cardiogenic shock team at TecSalud. “We’re trying to compensate for that drop in pressure to improve tissue perfusion.” This results in what Jiménez calls “the cardiogenic shock spiral.”

The problem with shock, he emphasizes, is that it affects other organs. “That’s why it’s so lethal, because the heart has already failed,” said Jiménez.

Devices and Lack of Competition

Mexico lacks its own technology to respond to cardiogenic shock, a condition that affects thousands of patients annually. With this in mind, experts from TecSalud and the School of Engineering and Sciences held a series of talks addressing the topic, and called on multidisciplinary teams to generate ideas and solutions.

“I don’t know a single doctor who understands this topic. We can place them and make them work, but we don’t know more than that,” admitted Guillermo Torre, rector of TecSalud and cardiology specialist, referring to the complex mechanical devices that represent the last line of defense for patients with severe heart failure.

Currently, three types of mechanical circulatory support devices exist:

• The intra-aortic balloon pump, which provides modest support by inflating and deflating in sync with heartbeats
• A series of pumps of different sizes to extract blood from the left ventricle and deliver it to the aorta
• ECMO systems (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) that assume the functions of both the heart and lungs.

“There are no Mexican devices of this kind. There’s no market competition,” said Torre, emphasizing that Mexico has no presence whatsoever in a sector that moves billions of dollars worldwide.

Currently, only the company Abiomed commercially produces pumps called Impella and was valued at $17 billion in 2024.
The pumps, sensors, control systems, and oxygenation membranes that make up these devices require expertise in fluid mechanics, materials science, electronics, and systems control, which creates an opportunity within the market for innovation.

The devices represent “engineering concepts” applied to medical contexts, Torre explained: “The solutions are not from doctors. We want someone from engineering and someone from medicine creating innovative solutions to this problem.”

Beyond Devices: The Diagnostic Challenge

Despite technological advances of the last decade, the combination of diagnosing, making an appropriate decision for the patient, and precision in the device implementation technique, managing cardiogenic shock is like “walking a very thin line,” says Jiménez.

“God is an engineer who made an adaptive body. Some people look sick, others don’t or are sicker than they appear,” explained Bhimaraj, emphasizing why more sophisticated tools than traditional clinical evaluation are needed.

Current diagnosis depends on a complex combination of blood pressure measurements, laboratory markers such as lactate levels, and invasive cardiac catheterization. The multiple steps frequently result in delayed interventions, when patients are already in the most severe stages of shock.

By then, the technical challenges of the devices become more dangerous for the patient. Bhimaraj identified some specific problems such as developing pumps that minimize damage to blood cells, more precise anticoagulation systems, devices that require less invasive vascular access, and more sophisticated continuous monitoring technologies.

Toward a Multidisciplinary Solution

Torre was categorical about the direction medicine should take: “What’s coming in the next 30 or 50 years is not a doctor’s ability to perform surgery with greater precision. Today’s advances are devices, sensors, pumps.”

By recognizing this problem, Tec opens the door to building national capabilities in critical medical technology and promotes direct collaborations between doctors who understand clinical needs and engineers capable of developing solutions. Eventually, they hope to launch a call for multidisciplinary teams to innovate in this sector.

Cardiogenic shock exemplifies how technological dependence in health can have vital consequences. Experts from TecSalud and Houston Methodist urge addressing the condition from both medical and technological perspectives.

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