Minimally Invasive Valve Surgery Clinical Trial Enrolls Participants

A new minimally invasive valve surgery called the Medtronic CoreValue System is enrolling participants across the US who are in need of heart valve replacement surgery.

Heart valve replacement surgery is for those who are suffering from a cardiovascular disease known as aortic stenosis, which causes a narrowing and malfunction of the valve that controls blood flow into the heart. The current treatment for aortic stenosis is open heart valve replacement surgery which involves an incision through the breast bone and temporarily stopping the heart while the patient is on a heart/lung bypass machine. The problem with this procedure that many patients requiring this treatment are too old or too weak to be eligible for this major surgery.

A new less invasive alternative treatment for aortic stenosis, called the CoreValue, is what many cardiologists hope will become the new replacement to open heart surgery. This new minimally invasive valve surgery technique uses a thin catheter to thread an artificial valve into the heart through a small incision located between the ribs. This procedure does not require stopping the heart or placing the patient on a heart/lung bypass machine. Side effects from this procedure are minimal and hospital stays are cut from a few weeks down to just a few days.

The CoreValue has been used in Europe successfully since 2007 and now Medtronic I conducting clinical trials in the US pending FDA approval. The only way to receive this minimally invasive valve surgery by enrolling in one of the 40 clincal trial's locations across the US. 

 

More about open heart vs. minimally invasive heart valve replacement.

New Adult Congential Heart Disease Clinic for Miami's Mount Sinai

It was a merging of the best of the North and the South: Miami's Mount Sinai Medical Center and New York's Columbia University joined together to form a partnership and just opened a new congenital heart disease (CHD) clinic specifically for adults.  The doctors at the Mount Sinai Institute cardiology Florida are some of the most reputably skilled in America in their practice and research studies.  One such study involved a new minimally invasive cardiac surgery technique to repair heart valves that is suitable for patients of all ages.  

The innovative new clinic is unique in that is specializes in the treatment of adults with congenital heart disease, rather than children.  Most cardiologists who specialize in CHD are pediatricians, as it actually forms early in fetal development.  Before the 1970s,  many children with CHD did not survive.  Now cardiac medical technology has advanced so much that children affected by this structural heart disease have a very high percentage rate opportunity to grow into adults.  According to WebMD, CHD affects 8-10 out of every 1,000 children and about 50,000 adults have the disease. 

The cardiologists Florida of the Mount Sinai Heart Institute have designed a program that treats patients after they've reached adulthood.  Treating adults patients with with congenital heart disease requires a lot of skill in the cardiac field because the heart changes after childhood surgery and adult treatment frequently requires correcting problems caused by complications such as pulmonary hypertension and and valve regurgitation.  The Heart Institute are actually enables patients to have access to their pediatric cardiologist they had as a child as well as their new adult one.  "Traditionally, pediatric cardiologists followed their adult patients because there were very few adult cardiologists familiar with their anatomy and management," states Dr. Juan-Carlos Brenes, the co-director of the Echocardiography Laboratory of Mount Sinai.  "Today, adult congenital heart specialists can bridge the gap between pediatric and adult cardiology, and are often best suited to manage difficult adult-related problems such as complex arrhythmias and chronic heart failure."