Northwestern Medicine’s Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute is celebrating the success of its transcatheter valve program, a pioneering technology that replaces or repairs leaky heart valves without open-heart surgery. On August 25, 2016, more than 50 former transcatheter valve replacement patients and their family members celebrated the life-saving procedure that has extended both their lives and their ability to enjoy them.
The Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute hit the milestone of being the first hospital in Illinois to perform the 500th TAVR, or transcatheter aortic valve replacement, since the program’s inception in 2008. Charles J. Davidson, MD, performed the 500th procedure on July 23, 2016.
To view the multimedia release go to:
http://www.multivu.com/players/English/7049452-northwestern-medicine-transcatheter-valve/
Abbott announced today that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the company’s Absorb bioresorbable heart stent, making the first-of-its-kind medical device commercially available to treat people with coronary artery disease in the United States.
Absorb is the only fully dissolving stent approved for the treatment of coronary artery disease, which affects 15 million people in the United States and remains a leading cause of death worldwide, despite decades of therapeutic advances. While stents are traditionally made of metal, Abbott’s Absorb stent is made of a naturally dissolving material, similar to dissolving sutures. Absorb disappears completely in approximately three years, after it has done its job of keeping a clogged artery open and promoting healing of the treated artery segment. By contrast, metal stents are permanent implants that restrict vessel motion for the life of the person treated.
To view the multimedia release go to:
http://www.multivu.com/players/English/7826651-abbott-fda-approval-stent/
Little Colby Boudreaux is moving his legs and feet. While this is something most parents take for granted, for Colby it’s remarkable. He underwent a life-changing surgery at Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans to correct the myelomeningocele birth defect, the most serious form of spina bifida… 12 weeks before he was born. During a groundbreaking surgery, Ochsner Medical Center’s fetal surgery team of 18 physicians and nurses operated on the 23-week-old fetus while still in his mother’s uterus, a procedure that fewer than 10 hospitals in the United States are able to perform.
To view Multimedia News Release, go to http://www.multivu.com/mnr/59661-ochsner-medical-center-first-in-utero-surgery-corrects-mmc-birth-defect