Is Open Heart Valve Surgery Passé?
Published at
iStock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — Open heart surgery has been the treatment for patients with symptoms from narrow heart valves.
Now, two new studies published Sunday in the journal Lancet show that a much less invasive technique – threading a replacement valve into the heart through the blood vessels in the leg, arm or chest – may be just as effective and could work on patients too sick for open heart.
One study followed 348 heart valve patients at 25 different hospitals across the world for 5 years. Researchers found that patients did just as well after the first procedure as those who had the traditional open heart approach.
In another study, researchers looked at 358 patients with aortic problems so severe they were deemed inoperable by traditional surgical means.
In the second group of patients, the less-invasive procedure cut their risk of death from 93.6 percent to 71.8 percent, according to researchers.
Follow @ABCNewsRadio
Copyright © 2015, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.