by
Lauren Dubinsky, Senior Reporter | March 20, 2017
From the March 2017 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
It takes a great deal of expertise and practice for a cardiologist to become proficient in TAVI, so it has historically only been performed at a few hospitals. However, Watson believes that it will become a more widely used procedure.
Much of the focus in medicine is shifting toward the preventive side and less on developing new techniques to treat heart disease. But with the growing elderly population, TAVI will remain a crucial treatment.
“Preventing it is a horse that’s already out of the barn for a lot of people,” says Watson. “They are still going to have to be able to address treating it.”
Current TAVI devices on the market require cardiac imaging to accurately position the new valve and a temporary pacemaker that makes the heart beat fast, so blood doesn’t circulate to the rest of the body during the procedure.
Researchers from the University of Cape Town in South Africa have developed a TAVI device that doesn’t require rapid ventricular pacing or cardiac imaging.
During the procedure, physicians use tactile feedback to place the device in the right position. A temporary backflow valve is used to stop the blood from leaking into the ventricle while the new valve is implanted.
If this new device comes to market, TAVI procedures can be performed in hospitals at a fraction of the cost of conventional TAVI.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure
“If we identified heart disease early enough, we would have ways to begin to modify their risk factors and lifestyle and keep them from ever getting to the point where they have to undergo a more invasive therapeutic procedure,” says Watson.
The health care industry is placing more of an emphasis on the noninvasive ways to assess a patient who may not have overt symptoms yet. That’s where cardiac CT and MR are playing a major role.
