Weaving Indigenous Textile Art Into Cardiac Devices

In a manufacturing facility in La Paz, Bolivia, Aymara women use their weaving skills to create occluder devices for treatment of large congenital heart defects. The devices are made from nitinol, which can be woven like thread but which has structural 'memory' so the device can be collapsed and delivered within a catheter to the site of the defect where it then expands to its original shape.