Patients with congenital heart disease will have a chance at a treatment without a major open heart surgery. Cardiologists at the Rush University Medical Center has developed a minimally-invasive transcatheter valve replacement. Patients involved in a clinical trial had this implant, and are presently recovering. This gives hope to patients that would otherwise undergo multiple open heart surgeries. The valve replacement procedure uses a bovine pericardial heart valve that is compressed into a balloon as small as a pencil, threaded from a major vein in the leg into the circulatory system, and is deployed across the pulmonary valve.
The US Food and Drug Administration conditionally approved the trial in 2007.
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