Chennai, India (CU)_ Apollo Hospitals Chennai performed the first Fourth Generation (G4) Transcatheter Mitral Valve Repair in India. According to reports, the Transcatheter Mitral Valve Repair System enables edge to edge mitral valve repair. It also enables physicians to select clip size depending on the patient’s mitral valve anatomy and an innovative leaflet gripping technology that enables physicians to grab leaflets concurrently or independently.
Dr. Sai Satish, Senior Interventional Cardiologist at Apollo Hospitals and an expert in heart valve replacement and mitral valve surgeries, successfully repaired the mitral valves of three older patients with end-stage heart failure who had come to Chennai for treatment from various states of India. Dr. Satish has done the most number of Transcatheter mitral valve repairs in the country.
The physician explained that two patients had also undergone aortic valve surgeries in the past, which had further affected their mitral anatomy. He said, “These patients had sustained extensive damage to their hearts, and were in refractory heart failure in spite of being optimally treated with medication and all other currently available heart failure devices. The intractable heart failure coupled with these extreme anatomical challenges would have made it impossible to treat them with any conventional device available today. The ability to independently grasp each valve leaflet allows us to now get surgical-like repair results even in these select complex anatomies”.
According to Dr. Satish, the first patient was a 69-year-old man with dilated cardiomyopathy and fewer than 20 percent cardiac function who had a pacemaker implanted in his heart in 2007. He had come in for symptoms of heart failure and severe mitral regurgitation. The second patient was a 73-year-old woman who suffered a cardiac arrest with a history of multiple surgical interventions, including neurosurgery for a brain tumor and radiation therapy. The third patient was a 76-year-old woman with severe mitral regurgitation, a condition in which blood flows back to the heart because the mitral valve fails to close tightly. Dr. Satish said that all the three patients have been discharged from the hospital and are cleared of all problems following the operation.
