Non-invasive heart valve replacement- Wow!

How cool is this? A minimally-invasive transcatheter valve replacement procedure has been developed and tested for patients with congenital heart disease. And guess what? It doesn’t involve open heart surgery.

Many times patients that are born with such congenital heart diseases as right ventricular outflow tract and they face many procedures and surgeries, which usually consist of opening the chest to replace the damaged valves.

“We were able to successfully implant the Edwards SAPIEN transcatheter heart valve percutaneously in the first three patients treated in this trial. All of the patients are recovering and are expected to go home today,” said Dr. Ziyad M. Hijazi, director of the Rush Center for Congenital and Structural Heart Disease, chief of the section of pediatric cardiology and professor in the departments of pediatrics and internal medicine at Rush University, Chicago.

The FDA had conditionally approved this in late 2007 and they are in hopes that these successes will help gain commercial approval to meet all patients needs. Exciting!!

via Science Daily