A device, invented at the University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center, offers a new treatment option for people with heart failure.

The new device — a tiny titanium and silicone rubber ring — fixes a leak within the heart, and at the same time adjusts the size and shape of the heart’s main pumping chamber. That makes it possible to restore some of the heart’s normal pumping ability, which helps many patients live better and longer, says U-M heart surgeon Steven Bolling.

Bolling has been operating on heart failure patients for over 10 years, fixing the structure called the mitral valve that regulates blood flow from the lungs to the heart.

In people with heart failure, as the heart gets bigger, the mitral valve doesn’t close all the way, and blood leaks backwards toward the lungs. This means the heart has to work even harder all the time and can’t keep up — a “vicious cycle,” Bolling calls it.

Fixing the mitral valve alone helps patients, but it would be even better if the left ventricle, could get smaller and more efficient.
That idea led Bolling to work on the new ring, which has a special shape that allows it to alter the left ventricle shape and size while also letting the mitral valve close properly.

The ring will be available under the name GeoForm.
It will be marketed by a medical device company, Edwards Lifesciences Corp., which received clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ( FDA ) for use in mitral valve repair.

Bolling, who has treated 25 patients with the ring so far and 75 other patients have received the ring at other hospitals, says “ It does not make patients’ hearts normal, and in fact their hearts may never be normal, but we believe that we’re affecting not only the quantity of life that they have left, but clearly the quality as well.”

Bolling is a co-inventor of this technology with Italian cardiac surgeon Ottavio Alfieri of the St. Raffaele Hospital in Milan.

Not every heart failure patient is a candidate to have their mitral valve repaired and their heart remodeled with the GeoForm ring or more conventional mitral valve rings, Bolling points out.

Each year, nearly 600,000 Americans have been diagnosed with heart failure. About half of them will develop a leaky mitral valve as their heart changes shape.
Many of these patients can get relief from combinations of medicines to make the heart pump faster or stronger, and a few patients will go on to receive a heart transplant or an implanted mechanical pumping device.
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Source: University of Michigan Health System, 2005


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