Patients with congenital heart disease will have a chance at a treatment without a major open heart surgery. Cardiologists at the Rush University Medical Center has developed a minimally-invasive transcatheter valve replacement. Patients involved in a clinical trial had this implant, and are presently recovering. This gives hope to patients that would otherwise undergo multiple open heart surgeries. The valve replacement procedure uses a bovine pericardial heart valve that is compressed into a balloon as small as a pencil, threaded from a major vein in the leg into the circulatory system, and is deployed across the pulmonary valve.
