 |
|
|
|
|
| [an error occurred while processing this directive]
|
Jerry Westling used to get winded walking up a flight of stairs. Now, thanks to a new surgical procedure using a patch made from cow heart tissue, the 56-year-old man is helping build a concession stand for an Oregon high-school baseball team.
"I feel tremendously blessed and have a new lease on life," said Mr. Westling, whose heart was severely damaged by a heart attack seven years ago.
The innovative procedure, called surgical ventricular restoration (SVR), is used to help restore a weakened heart chamber, or ventricle, to its normal shape and function.
"The normal heart is shaped more or less like an ellipse," Dr. O.H. Frazier, director of surgical research at the Texas Heart Institute, told NHW. "With failure it becomes more spherical. In the properly selected patient, this technology will certainly improve cardiac function, thereby reducing breathlessness and other symptoms related to heart failure."
The CorRestore System, designed by Somanetics Corporation in Michigan, features a bovine heart tissue implant containing a ridged inner ring surrounded by a contoured outer rim. FDA-approved in November 2001, the implant was tested in a 13-center, 662-patient, three-year trial of patients with class III or IV heart failure. Among 355 patients reported at the final three-year follow-up, 91 percent had experienced some improvement. Overall survival was 89.4 percent.
The heart surgery team at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland performed the procedure on Jerry Westling in December 2002. Five days after surgery, he was back at home with his wife and three sons. More than 500,000 new cases of severe heart failure will be diagnosed in 2003.
|
