
AsianScientist (Sep. 22, 2017) – In a press release by the Cardiovascular Surgery Group at Osaka University in Japan, researchers in Japan announced that they have successfully performed a minimally invasive procedure in cardiac failure patients with prosthetic valve dysfunction.
Cardiac surgery in patients with severe heart failure is considered a high-risk procedure. The risk of re-operation is especially high when a prosthetic valve becomes dysfunctional. Also, surgical stress may further deteriorate cardiac function in patients waiting for heart transplants, increasing their need for an auxiliary artificial heart.
In this study, the Cardiovascular Surgery Group at Osaka University performed a first-in-the-world transcatheter mitral valve implantation in severe cardiac failure patients with prosthetic valve dysfunction, succeeding in improving the cardiac function of these patients. Prosthetic valve dysfunction was previously thought to be incurable.
The study was led by Professor Yoshiki Sawa of the Cardiovascular Group in the Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka University, who has developed a wide variety of treatments for severe heart failure, such as skeletal myoblast cell sheet transplantation. Sawa’s group has performed over 500 transcatheter valve replacement surgeries, a minimally invasive heart surgery technique that has established Osaka University Hospital as one of Japan’s leading medical institutes.
In the future, this technique may be used as therapy for prosthetic valve dysfunction in patients with serious heart failure who are either inoperable or require a post-surgery auxiliary artificial heart.
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Source: Osaka University; Photo: Shutterstock.
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