WINSTON-SALEM, NC-- A mix of technology and health is benefiting people with a common heart valve problem.
Only one hospital in our area is doing this special surgery. The procedure is for people with Mitral Regurgitation or MR. MR makes people short of breath, tired and weak and can lead to congestive heart failure.
Doctors typically do open heart surgery to repair the Mitral Valve. But Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center is using a much less invasive procedure called a "Transcatheter Mitral Valve Repair" or TMVR for short. The procedure used a device called the MitraClip.
Check out how it works. The animation in the attached video shows the left side of the heart. See the blue dots. That's blood and it's trickling into back into the left atrium of the heart through the Mitral Valve. It should all be staying in the left ventricle and the rest of the body.
The solution: doctors put a small high-tech MitraClip in the valve to help it close so the blood doesn't flow back into the heart chamber. Patricia Lytton received the MitraClip. "Oh, it's given me a new outlook on life," she said. "I feel like I can see my grandchildren grow, and do all the things they're interested in."
WFB has performed 16 total surgeries using the MitraClip.
