"Tiny Device may be a ‘Huge Advance’ For Treatment Of
Severe Heart Failure" -Gina Kolata
Almost two million Americans have a severe coronary failure,
and for them even mundane tasks can be extraordinarily difficult.
Drugs may help to regulate the symptoms, but the disease takes a relentless course and most of the people with severe coronary failure don't have long to live.
Until now, there have been little doctors can do. Researchers reported that a small clip inserted into the guts sharply reduced death rates in patients with severe heart failure.
In the new study, a tool called the
MitraClip was wont to repair the bicuspid valve by clipping its two flaps together within
the middle.
The result was to convert a valve that hardly functioned into one ready to regulate blood flow in and out of the heart.
The results have left leading researchers unexpectedly optimistic. The trial sends “a very, very powerful message,” said Gilbert H.
Tang, MD, surgical director of the Structural Heart Program at the Sinai Health System, which enrolled a patient in the trial.
Doctors must watch an X-ray screen and an echocardiogram as they guide the clip to the mitral valve. When the clip arrives, “you need to see where you're grasping to get a good result,” Dr. Tang said.
The result was to convert a valve that hardly functioned into one ready to regulate blood flow in and out of the heart.
The results have left leading researchers unexpectedly optimistic. The trial sends “a very, very powerful message,” said Gilbert H.
Tang, MD, surgical director of the Structural Heart Program at the Sinai Health System, which enrolled a patient in the trial.
Doctors must watch an X-ray screen and an echocardiogram as they guide the clip to the mitral valve. When the clip arrives, “you need to see where you're grasping to get a good result,” Dr. Tang said.
Gilbert H. Tang, MD, Senior Faculty, Cardiovascular
Surgery, Icahn School of drugs at Sinai, Surgical Director, The Structural Heart Program,
Sinai Health System.
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