Self-powered cardiovascular medical devices: From monitoring to therapy

Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death worldwide, and diseases such as arrhythmias, heart failure, and coronary heart disease pose significant challenges to diagnosis and treatment due to their high morbidity, sudden onset, and frequent complications. Traditional cardiovascular disease management often relies on clinical diagnosis and complex, bulky, and large monitoring devices, which limit their lifespan, portability, and long-term applicability. In recent years, self-powered technologies have developed rapidly, and they have opened up new avenues for cardiovascular health care by enabling power-free sensing and harvesting energy from physiological activities. These technologies show great potential in developing next-generation cardiovascular medical devices for continuous monitoring and therapeutic intervention. This paper reviews the working mechanisms of various self-powered technologies and systematically summarizes their applications in cardiovascular monitoring and treatment. We particularly emphasize the representative progress of wearable and implantable self-powered cardiovascular monitoring devices, as well as self-powered cardiac intervention therapy devices and neuromodulation therapy devices. Finally, the main challenges and future prospects of this emerging field are discussed, aiming to provide insights and inspiration for further research and clinical application of self-powered cardiovascular medical devices.