Nick Amoroso, M.D., an interventional cardiologist at MUSC Health, performed South Carolina’s first TAVR for aortic regurgitation this year as part of a clinical trial for the new valve device, known as the JenaValve trilogy heart valve.
the, you know, valve or Jenna valve depending on what part of the world you're coming from is a Tavern device and it's really a new heart valve that is designed to treat both aortic regurgitation and aortic stenosis. Which is novel because previously Tavern is really only designed to treat patients with aortic stenosis. This procedure with the valve is offering a treatment opportunity for a whole group of patients who we've only been able to treat with open heart surgery in a safe manner. While Tavern for aortic regurgitation has been done, we all know those of us who do Taber routinely know that that's a much higher risk procedure than performing Tavern for aortic stenosis with the devices we currently have in the US. So the inner valve really offers us a safer alternative for treating patients with aortic regurgitation. But through minimally invasive technique that helps patients recover more quickly, we have what we call a heart team. The heart team includes cardiac surgeon, interventional cardiologist, cardiac anesthesiologist, sometimes some of our other clinical providers like heart failure specialist. And we put our heads together to help determine what's the best way to treat these special types of heart problems in doing so. Then it makes sure we're offering patients the broad range of options that's gonna give them the best results. Both. Safest the easiest recovery and the most effective as Tavern is typically done. We it's a perk Catania's procedure where we gain access in the femoral artery. Uh a needle hole goes in the femoral artery and as she goes from the femoral artery up to the aorta. Uh, the you know valve specifically, it is a 20 French design and it has a long sheath that goes reaching all the way from the femoral artery up to the ascending Aorta. Uh This allows for safe passage of the, you know, valve and allows us to then expose the locators which are the specialized clipping mechanism of the, you know, valve uh from that position. Then we're able to make rotations to get them properly aligned to the patient's anatomy. Make sure that we grasp the leaflets and confirm that we have a good grasp. Once we've confirmed that both by Flora Skopje and trans esophageal echocardiogram, then we release the valve afterwards. We assess that we have eliminated regurgitation and were able to remove our delivery equipment per catania's closure is completed, as we would typically do for a tavern and patient generally goes to recovery and to a floor service where they're monitored overnight. Most patients are able to go home the following day. There's still a small percentage of patients that suffer from stroke during Tavern or require permanent pacemaker implants afterwards. Otherwise, thankfully, issues of emergency open heart surgery, Death vascular complications are relatively low risk, much like the contemporary Tavern experience with other commercial valves. The patients that we've treated so far have had successful procedures thankfully. And we know that other patients across the country have also been seeing good results. Um The valve is also already commercially approved in europe just this past year, and so it's being used a little bit more widely, with an excellent results as we anticipated. So in the future, I think that there is opportunity for this valve to become, you know, a a standard of care. Right now. They are working through clinical trial in hopes of gaining FDA approval and showing that they get the excellent results that they anticipate.
