MitraClip™ Heart Procedure in Louisville
Baptist Health Louisville: Mitral Valve Heart Procedure with MitraClip
The MitraClip is a mitral valve clip used instead of surgery to treat mitral valve regurgitation. Learn about the MitraClip procedure from Baptist Health.
MitraClip Heart Procedure in Louisville, HealthTalks Transcript
Brian Kaebnick, MD, Interventional Cardiology:
The mitral valve is the valve that connects the lungs to the heart. When that leaks, blood can move backward into the lungs and can cause fluid to build up on the lungs. Also, if the valve is leaking, the heart is less efficient and it can lead to heart failure. A lot of times, mitral valve regurgitation may only be mild or moderate, in which case, we can closely monitor that with serial echocardiograms or ultrasounds of the heart. However, if the mitral valve is severe, oftentimes we need to look into therapies to address that.
Christopher Semder, MD, Interventional Cardiology:
There’s a few different ways to address the mitral valve. A couple of those ways are surgical. We have MitraClip, which is a minimally invasive approach to fixing the mitral valve from the femoral vein. The clip has two arms that are grabbing onto the anterior and posterior leaflets of the mitral valve, pulling them together at the area where it’s leaking the most, creating a double orifice mitral valve, [and] decreasing the mitral valve leakiness from severe to hopefully trivial or mild.
Dr. Kaebnick:
We choose MitraClip in those individuals who might be high risk, advanced age, too frail to undergo surgery, or might have contraindications to open-heart surgery. In which case, this is an alternative option that can help address their mitral valve regurgitation and get them feeling better.
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