Surgeons Pilot Expandable Prosthetic Valves for Congenital Heart Disease

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121003082933.htm

Science Daily
Published: October 3, 2012

Summary:

For patients with any sort of mitral valve disease, doctors prefer to do a repair surgery but when repair is impossible, they take the valve replacement surgery approach. However, during the replacement the traditional prosthetic valves have a fixed diameter and this poses a problem for children with congenital heart diseases. As time passes, the children outgrow their prosthetic valves and this calls for multiple replacement surgeries to fit the child with the prosthetic valve that fits their newly grown heart. The faster the child grows, the faster they outgrow their prosthetic valves and the more replacements they have to have. Doctors at the Boston Children’s Hospital have come up with a new way of modifying the mitral valve replacement surgery in pediatric patients. Medical scientists have revolutionized the care for infants and small children with complicated mitral valve diseases by coming up with the expandable prosthetic mitral valve called the Melody Valve. This valve can be expanded by cardiac catheterization as the child grows. Catheterization is when an X-Ray guided catheter is inserted into a femoral artery which is then navigated to the heart, into the mitral valve. This reduces the number of valve replacement surgeries children need. It was initially approved for the replacement of the heart’s pulmonary valve, which is the valve that controls blood flow from the heart to the lungs. However doctors now have started using it to replace the mitral valve. When the Melody is implanted in a child, doctors can potentially leave it there till the child reaches adulthood with minimal number of operations and risk of the lungs swelling due to valve leakage. It opens up the opportunity to carry out mitral valve replacement in more children and at an earlier point in time.

 

Connection:

This connects to the unit on the circulatory system where we studied the mitral valve, also known as the bicuspid valve, which is located on the left side of the heart, in between the left atrium and left ventricle. The direction of blood flow at this point is when the heart receives the oxygenated blood from the lungs and the blood flows into the left atrium and then flows into the left ventricle. The bicuspid valve prevents back flow of blood from the left ventricle into the left atrium disrupting the directional flow, in a process known as mitral regurgitation. This disrupts the function of the blood transporting minerals and nutrients, especially oxygen in this case, to the rest of the body. The Melody Valve used during replacement surgeries in children restores the structure of the mitral valve and helps the overall circulatory system to function efficiently by transporting adequate blood supply to the rest of the body.