The cardiac surgery team at Washington, D.C.-based Children’s National Hospital has become the first in the world to replace an artificial heart valve with a live tissue valve through a partial heart transplant.
Artificial heart valves are the standard of care for children born with congenital heart disease, but need to be replaced after about 10 years, requiring children to undergo multiple open-heart surgeries before adulthood, according to a May 12 news release from the hospital.
For this procedure, the Children’s National team replaced an 11-year-old male patient’s artificial mitral valve with a live working valve from a donor heart.
Live tissue implants should grow with the patient, decreasing the need for future open-heart surgeries, the release said.
