Heart nanotechnology is the "Engineering of functional systems at the molecular scale" ("Nanotechnology Research").
Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology deals with structures and materials that are approximately one to one-hundred nanometers in length. At this microscopic level, quantum mechanics take place and are in effect, resulting in behaviors that would seem quite strange compared to what humans see with the naked eye (regular matter). Nanotechnology is used for a wide variety of fields of technology, ranging from energy to electronics to medicine. In the category of medicine, nanotechnology is still relatively new and has not yet been widely adopted by the field. It is possible that nanotechnology could be the new breakthrough of medicine and may eventually be the solution and cure for many of the health problems that humans encounter. Nanotechnology may lead to the cure for illnesses such as the common cold, diseases, and cancer. It is already starting to be used as a treatment for some serious health issues; more specifically it is being used to treat the heart and cancer.
Nanomedicine
Nanotechnology in the field of medicine is more commonly referred to as nanomedicine. Nanomedicine that deals with helping the heart is really starting to take off and gain in popularity compared to most of the other fields that nanomedicine currently has to offer. There are several heart problems that nanotechnology has promising evidence of being effective in the treatment of heart disease in the near future.
Examples
It should hopefully be able to treat heart valves that are defective; and detect and treat arterial plaque in the heart ("Nanotechnology Made Clear"). Nanomedicine should be able to help heal the hearts of people that have already been victims of heart disease and heart attacks. On the other hand, it will also play a key role in finding people with a high risk of having heart disease, and will be able to help prevent heart attacks from happening in the first place. Nanotechnology of the heart is a lot less invasive than surgery because everything is occurring at a minuscule level in the body compared to relatively large tissues that are dealt with in surgery. With our technology today, heart surgeries are performed to treat the damaged heart tissue that resulted from a heart attack. This is a major surgery that usually takes a couple of months to recover from ("WebMD - Better Information. Better Health"). During this period, patients are extremely limited in the activities that they can do. This long recovery process is an inconvenience to the patients, and with the growth of medicine it most likely won't be very long before a more efficient method for treating heart attack patients will be developed and used. The method that is the frontrunner to replace major heart surgery is the use of nanotechnology. There are a couple alternate ways to heart surgery that nanotechnology will potentially be able to offer in the future.
Alternatives to surgery
With people that have heart disease or that have suffered a heart attack, their hearts are often damaged and weakened. The more minor forms of heart failure do not require surgery and are often treated with medications ("WebMD - Better Information. Better Health"). The use of nanotechnology on treating damaged hearts will not replace these milder heart problems, but rather the more serious heart problems that currently require surgery or sometimes even heart transplants.
Heart repair
A group of engineers, doctors and materials scientists at MIT and Children's Hospital Boston have teamed together and are starting the movement of finding a way to use nanotechnology to strengthen the weakened heart tissue ("MIT - Massachusetts Institute of Technology"). The first method uses nanotechnology combined with tissue engineering, and gold nanowires are placed and woven into the damaged parts of the heart, essentially replacing the non-functioning or dead tissues.
Tissue regeneration
The other approach would potentially use minuscule nanoparticles that would travel through the body and find dying heart tissue. The nanoparticles would be carrying objects such as "stem cells, growth factors, drugs and other therapeutic compounds,". Then the nanoparticles would release the compounds and inject them into the damaged heart tissue. This would theoretically lead to the regeneration of the tissue.