A friend of mine has been diagnosed with some regurgitation in a couple of his heart valves. We don’t know the seriousness yet, and whether he might need replacements. This made me look into the state of the art in non-invasive procedures. When I was having my aortic valve replaced, there was a non-invasive procedure available called Transcatheter aortic valve replacement (Tavr), but at that time it had been only approved for patients who were at higher risk of complications from conventional heart-valve surgery. It has since been approved as an option for the general population. However, that would still not have been an option for me because I had a congenital condition known as a bicuspid aortic valve and Tavr doesn’t work for that.
It turns out that in the six years since my surgery, there has been considerable progress, and trans-catheter procedures are now available for all four heart valves (shown below).
The non-Invasive Mitral Valve procedure is described here.
The non-Invasive Pulmonic valve procedure is described here.
The non-Invasive Tricuspid valve procedure is described here.
