Loyola University Medical Center has successfully implanted a newly approved aortic heart valve device in a patient without doing an open-heart surgery, which comes as a major relief to heart patients.
The device called the Medtronic CoreValve System, which has recently been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, is deployed with a catheter which is inserted in an artery in the groin and guided up to the heart to take over the function of a diseased valve.
The procedure is much less invasive than traditional open-heart surgery.
Loyola physicians also implanted the device in patients participating in clinical trials, making the hospital the first Illinois hospital to implement the procedure.
The study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
