Structural Heart
This structural heart channel includes news, videos, podcasts and other content related to diagnosis and treatment of structural heart disease. Topics covered include heart valve repair and replacement, transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR), transcatheter mitral valve replacement (TMVR), transcatheter tricuspid valve replacement (TTVR), left atrial appendage (LAA) occlusion, heart failure interventional device therapies, and closing holes in the heart using, including occlusion of atrial septal defects (ASDs), ventricular septal defects (VSDs) and patent foramen ovales (PFOs).

The Abbott Tendyne transcatheter mitral valve replacement (TMVR) system, left, became the first TMVR device to gain commercial regulatory clearance in the world. It gains European CE mark in January. Another top story in January was the first use of the Robocath R-One robotic cath lab catheter guidance system in Germany. Watch a VIDEO of the system in use in one of those cases.

The Abbott Tendyne transcatheter mitral valve replacement (TMVR) system uses an anchor attached to the apex of the heart with a whether line attached to the valve. This helps to keep the valve anchored in the mitral annulus and prevent embolization. This anchor system was used because, unlike the aortic valve, the mitral valve has a very thin landing zone to secure the valve. The design also eliminated any hardware hanging or folding into the left ventricle, which could cause left ventricular outflow track (LVOT) obstruction, which can prevent blood flow through the aortic valve and to the rest of the body.

This is an example of artificial intelligence automation for cardiac MRI using an AI app from TeraRecon's Envoy AI marketplace. The GE MRI image has been countoured, anatomy labeled and all quantification automated by the AI, greatly reducing post-processing time. See this and other new AI imaging technologies from the 2019 RSNA meeting.

Ten out of the top 25 videos in 2019 are from hospital site visits DAIC conducted and shot more than 10 video interviews and recorded cath lab procedures at each center. Two of the videos here are walk throughs of cath labs, showing how Henry Ford Hospital and the University of Colorado set up their main hybrid rooms for structural heart procedures. This photo is from a MitraClip procedure during the University of Colorado visit last December.

The Wyss Translational Center in Zurich, Switzerland has developed the LifeMatrix platform to engineer tissues that can be implanted in patients and will grow with them. This technology is being developed for heart valves in younger patients to eliminate the need for repeat surgeries to implant larger prosthetic heart valves as the patient grows.

Append Medical, developer of a novel left atrial appendage (LAA) closure device to minimize stroke risk in atrial fibrillation (AF) patients, announced that it has been selected from among hundreds of startups as a finalist for the ICI Innovation Award Competition. It uses a transcatheter lasso system so no implant is left behind and eliminates the possibility of embolization.

The most popular content in the month of November on DAIC was by far the data from the late-breaking trials from the American Herart Association (AHA) 2019 meeting. The second item on this month's list is an overview of key heart failure takeaways from AHA by Nasrien Ibrahim, M.D., associate director of resynchronization and advanced cardiac therapeutics at Massachusetts General Hospital. Photo by Scott Morgan/AHA.