Abbott launches minimally-invasive heart valve repair device

Global healthcare company Abbott has launched its clip-delivery system, a minimally-invasive heart valve repair device, to treat mitral regurgitation in India. The device clips portions of the leaflets, or flaps, of the mitral valve together to reduce the backflow of blood (known as mitral regurgitation, or MR), restoring the heart's ability to pump oxygenated blood more efficiently.

This product puts new technology into the hands of physicians, giving them a life-saving treatment option that could be used on people suffering from mitral regurgitation due to a heart defect or as a result of heart failure.

This clip device could repair leaky mitral valves without an open-heart surgery as it is delivered to the heart through a vein in the leg.

“Abnormalities of the heart’s valves and chambers, known as structural heart conditions, affect millions of lives around the world”, said Payal Agrawal, General Manager for Abbott’s structural heart division in India. “Abbott’s life-changing technologies improve how these conditions can be treated. We believe that innovative heart treatments have the potential to change the standard of care for patients. This transcatheter clip-based therapy can help make a difference as it is associated with less trauma for a patient.”

To date, this product has helped treat more than 1 lakh people worldwide suffering from MR and is supported by the industry's most extensive body of clinical evidence, including the results of the landmark COAPT trial published in The New England Journal of Medicine in September 2018.

According to a study by The Lancet, cardiovascular diseases caused 28 per cent of deaths (2.8 million) in 2016, which was double the numbers reported in 1990 when it caused 15 per cent of deaths (1.3 million) in the country.

“Heart disease” is a blanket term for several kinds of heart conditions. Among them, mitral regurgitation (MR), is the most common heart valve problem. The mitral valve is located between the heart's two left chambers. The mitral valve has two flaps of tissue, called leaflets that open and close to ensure that blood flows in only one direction. When the mitral valve fails to close completely, blood leaks backwards inside the heart, causing MR. About 1 in 10 people aged 75 and older have MR.