Surgeons succeed in heart valve procedure

By Evie Andreou

A NEW non-surgical method, which is considered to be the only effective treatment for mitral regurgitation, a condition where the heart’s mitral valve doesn’t close tightly, allowing blood to flow backward in the heart, has been successfully applied for the first time in Cyprus, by a group of cardiac surgeons of the American Medical Centre/American Heart Institute.

The MitraClip Percutaneous Mitral Valve Repair procedure brings good news to high risk patients who can now avoid open heart surgery and the risks it entails.

During the procedure, one or more clips are inserted by catheter through the leg. The clips decrease regurgitating blood by decreasing the mitral valve’s opening.

The benefits of the procedure are low pre-operative mortality, short hospitalisation period of only 48 hours, an essential decrease of the regurgitation level and decrease of symptoms. Furthermore, a decrease has been recorded in re-admissions of patients that undergo the procedure and statistics show increase in the survival percentage of patients with advanced heart failure/insufficiency.

Mitral regurgitation is the most frequent valve disease and in its severe form can cause hart failure symptoms like easy fatigue, dyspnoea in natural fatigue up to acute pulmonary oedema and predisposes the development of heart arrhythmias and strokes.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.