ROSLYN, N.Y., Jan. 11, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Newell Robinson,
M.D., Chairman of the Department of Cardiothoracic & Vascular
Surgery; George Petrossian, M.D., Director of Interventional
Cardiovascular Procedures; Andrew Berke, M.D., interventional
cardiologist; and Roberto Colangelo, M.D., cardiothoracic surgeon
at St. Francis Hospital, The Heart Center® are part of the
medical team that is testing a device that may offer new hope for
patients with symptomatic, severe aortic stenosis.
St. Francis Hospital has been selected as one of 40 centers
nationwide to assess the Medtronic CoreValve system for
transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI), which has recently
received conditional approval from the FDA for clinical trials.
St. Francis is one of the first hospitals in the U.S. to be
activated as a site, and cardiologists have begun the process of
implanting it in patients who are at high risk, or are ineligible,
for open heart surgery.
Approximately 300,000 people worldwide (100,000 in the U.S.)
have been diagnosed with the condition, which prevents the valve
from opening completely, thereby preventing healthy blood flow from
the aorta to the rest of the body. But about one third of
these patients are deemed at too high a risk for open heart
surgery,(i) the only therapy with significant clinical effect that
is currently available in the United States. Although the
CoreValve system has been implanted in 12,000 patients worldwide,
it has not been available to patients in the U.S. until now.
The new valve replacement procedure channels a tube called a
catheter with a prosthetic valve through the femoral artery to
reach the heart. The CoreValve System is designed with
self-expandable technology, deploying the new valve inside the
diseased aortic valve without open-heart surgery or surgical
removal of the native valve.
“This is the most revolutionary device I’ve seen in my more than
20 years of being a card
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