A new transcatheter mitral prosthesis, of Italian-French production, was implanted in a beating heart for the first time in the world in humans with an operation performed in Turin at the Molinette hospital.
The prosthesis, called Epygon, is positioned without resorting to the traditional extracorporeal circulation, i.e. open heart surgery.
It was conceived in the Biopark of Colleretto Giacosa (Turin) and developed in France.
The patient is a 62-year-old woman who suffered from a severe form of mitral insufficiency, judged untreatable with traditional cardiac surgery due to multiple risk factors.
The patient was transferred to the Veruno rehabilitation after only 5 days of hospitalization.
"These procedures - they explain to the City of Health - are called transcatheter and are performed in an optimal way by specialized groups, called Heart Team. It is a technique already applied all over the world on the aortic valve (Tavi) for very elderly or elderly patients. high operative risk.But applying the same method on the mitral valve is a novelty.First of all, the stages of invention and development are much more difficult because the anatomy of this valve is much more complex than that of the aortic valve.
The operation also requires the perfect collaboration of the Heart Team in hyper-specialised centres". The operation was performed by Stefano Salizzoni - assisted by Michele La Torre and Antonio Montefusco - in the cardio-thoraco-vascular department of Molinette directed by Mauro Rinaldi.Epygon, developed by the French company Affluent Medical, has overcome a long process "thanks to the synergy between industry, hospitals and universities of the two countries, and has obtained the approval of the intercompany Ethics Committee".
The directors of the University Centers of Turin and Lyon, Mauro Rinaldi and Marco Vola, express "satisfaction with the clinical result, with the strong collaboration between the two teams, above all because the research and development process of the valve prosthesis was all conducted within Europe, between Italy and France".
