Structural interventions
Transcatheter treatment of valve diseases in collaboration with the Haemodynamics Unit
The Adult Cardiac Surgery Unit participates, in collaboration with the Diagnostic and Interventional Cadiology Unit, in the interventional treatment programme for the main valvulopathies: this refers to procedures performed with a beating heart without the need to use extracorporeal circulation, and with no or minimal surgical incision.
These procedures are aimed at a group of patients for whom surgery is not recommended due to their high degree of frailty.
The main diseases addressed are calcific aortic valve stenosis, mitral regurgitation and tissue valve degeneration.
The procedures carried out are as follows:
- Transfemoral, trans-subclavian, transapical and transaortic TAVI. This is the implantation of a prosthetic valve into the patient’s diseased aortic valve. The prosthetic valve is squeezed inside a small catheter, carried through the circulatory stream until it reaches the level of the native aortic valve and, without stopping the heartbeat, is released into the correct position, where it replaces the function of the degenerated valve.
- Transapical, transfemoral aortic and mitral valve-in-valve. This is the treatment of degeneration of previously implanted tissue valves by implanting a new valve into the malfunctioning prosthesis.
- Mitral repair by percutaneous edge-to-edge.
- Beating-heart mitral valve prosthesis implantation without extracorporeal circulation with transapical approach.
