New Heart Implant Offers Option to Patients Who Do Not Meet Criteria for Open Heart Surgery

A newly developed heart implant designed to replace the tricuspid valve can provide patients who are not eligible for traditional heart surgery a treatment option where none existed before.

Designed and manufactured by P+F Products + Features GmbH (Wien, Austria), the TricValve Transcatheter Bicaval Valves is a system of two self-expanding biological valves for the treatment of patients with hemodynamically relevant tricuspid insufficiency and caval reflux. The prostheses are implanted percutaneously into the superior and inferior vena cava without disturbing the native tricuspid valve. It is especially intended for use for patients at extreme risk or who are inoperable for open surgical therapy.

Specifically, the transcatheter procedure involves going through a patient's groin and into a main vein to the heart. The two self-expanding valves are deployed at the end of a probe and implanted percutaneously into the inferior and superior vena cava which then replaces the function of the tricuspid valve. Although transcatheter therapies have become the standard of care procedures over the last decade with aortic and mitral valve therapies, until recently there has been no available transcatheter therapy for the tricuspid valve.

"The TricValve system represents a new transcatheter technology that could offer patients with symptomatic severe tricuspid regurgitation (TR) and heart failure an option for symptom relief and improved function. It is about a one-hour procedure with fast patient recovery and does not involve fully opening the chest cavity," said Dr. Hiram Grando Bezerra, who was among the Tampa General Hospital and USF Health Morsani College of Medicine Interventional cardiologists to use the newly developed heart implant designed to replace the tricuspid valve and offer an option to patients who do not meet the criteria for open heart surgery.

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