Sutureless Replacement Heart Valve

A new aortic heart valve is designed to eliminate the need for a surgeon to suture the device into the aortic annulus of the patient, saving around 30 minutes or more of cardiopulmonary bypass time.

Using no stitches, a surgical team at Jagiellonian University (Krakow, Poland) recently replaced the failing aortic heart valve of a 76-year-old patient. Based on the success of the first implant, the team implanted two additional valves in patients meeting the selection criteria. All valves required less than one minute of implantation positioning time, with dramatic reduction of aorta cross-clamp time and cardiopulmonary bypass time. All valves were fully competent. Called the 3F Enable aortic heart valve, the new valve was developed by 3F Therapeutics, Inc. (Lake Forest, CA, USA).

"In major surgical centers like ours around the world, most of these valve replacement patients also have coronary artery bypass graft surgery at the same time their heart valves are replaced,” explained Dr. Jerzy Sadowski, M.D., Ph.D., chief of the department of cardiovascular surgery and transplantology at Jagiellonion University. "Single or multiple vessel grafting is also time consuming, and the combination of these operations into a single case is the larger target of this research endeavor. A standard mechanical or tissue heart valve takes me about 30 minutes to suture in place. This new 3F product allowed me to achieve the same result in less than 50 seconds.”

The patented technologies of 3F Therapeutics, based on a tubular valve concept, lend themselves to minimally invasive surgery and will be applicable to both aortic and mitral valve replacement.





Related Links:
www.uj.edu.pl
3F Therapeutics