Pig valve heart implant patients can avoid total surgery!

Patients with a debilitating heart condition can avoid major surgery by implanting an electronic valve.

The tiny device, which can be installed in less than an hour using local anesthesia, is designed to treat aortic regurgitation, a condition in which the body lacks oxygenated blood, resulting in malnourished patients.

The problem occurs when the valve at the outlet of the heart, the aortic valve, becomes damaged and cannot close completely. This allows blood to leak back into the heart and affects its ability to pump blood efficiently. It is most common in older patients and people with high blood pressure. Damage can also be associated with infection.

This condition requires open-heart surgery, which involves opening the patient’s chest, placing their heart on a heart-lung machine, and replacing the valve.

However, many patients remain too weak to undergo this major operation. In addition, there has not yet been a valve implant designed specifically for aortic regurgitation – surgeons use implants designed to treat other forms of valve disease.

The new JenaValve Trilogy electronic implant with a metal frame and a scraper valve can be placed in a minimally invasive procedure that takes less than an hour. “There has never been anything like it before,” said cardiologist Andreas Baumbach, who led the team that developed the device at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London.

And the JenaValve trilogy will make a huge difference. The first few hundred patients have already been cured, and the success rate is almost 100%.

During JenaValve triple implantation, a small incision is made in the femoral artery in the groin – an anesthetic is used to numb the area, but the patients are fully conscious.

A thin, flexible tube called a catheter is then inserted into an artery and passed through the body to the heart, using an X-ray machine to see what they are doing in real time. The JenaValve, made from a metal frame in the form of a foldable tube, is held in place through a catheter. It is difficult at first, but once the surgeon confirms that it is in the right place, it opens.

The flap is fully expanded and is about an inch in diameter, but the size can be adjusted on site to ensure the perfect fit. Professor Baumbach said that three small legs – a bit like the legs of a lunar lander – keep them in position above the normal aortic valve, and they immediately begin to work.

The catheter is then removed, the incision is sutured, and patients are allowed to go home after a day or two.

Source: Daily Mail

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