June 15, 2017 – Structural heart interventions are increasingly applied in patients with severe tricuspid regurgitation (TR) and these operations are serious surgical risks. To limit the danger of these challenging interventional procedures, catheter-based tricuspid valve (TV) repair can be pre-operatively planned using 3-D printed patient-specific TV models.
Doctors at the Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas, have been studying these advances.
“The 3-D printed fabrication of cardiovascular structures is a cutting-edge clinical tool that creates anatomically correct replicas of heart valves," said lead author Marija Vukicevic, M.D. "Using advanced imaging and composite materials technologies, these replicas can be tailored to accurately match the original native tissues of individual patients. This promising development in medical science has the potential to revolutionize the existing state of diagnostics and monitoring, surgical tools, and devices, pre-procedural planning and simulation. Immediate applications of such models include medical training of doctors, and education of patients about their disease and treatment options. This technology allows surgeons and interventional teams to hold 3D printed patient-specific hearts in their hand prior to performing a procedure. This ability to observe the patient’s complex cardiovascular geometry in a controlled environment will optimize device selection, procedural planning, and ultimately increase operation success rates.”
Researchers on the study, “3D Printed Modeling of Tricuspid Valve for Structural Heart Valve Intervention,” included Marija Vukicevic, Eleonora Avenatti, Kinan Carlos El-Tallawi, Colin M. Barker, Stephen H. Little. Houston Methodist Hospital.
Vukicevic presented a poster based on this research during the Arthur E. Weyman Young Investigator’s Award Competition at the recent 2017 meeting of the American Society of Echocardiography (ASE).
Watch the ASE 2017 VIDEO “Incorporation of 3-D Echo Into Peri-operative Practice.” Madhav Swaminathan, M.D., FASC, FAHA, clinical director of cardiothoracic anesthesiology, at Duke University Medical Center, discusses use of cardiac ultrasound in cardiac surgery and interventional structural heart procedures.
Watch the ASE 2017 VIDEO “Transcatheter Tricuspid Valve Repair and Replacement Technologies.” A discussion with Rebecca Hahn, M.D., FASE, director of interventional echocardiography and professor of medicine at Columbia University Medical Center / New York-Presbyterian Hospital, New York. She is the national principal investigator for the SCOUT I Trial for the Trialign Percutaneous Tricuspid Valve Annuloplasty System.
For more information: ASEcho.org
October 21, 2024 
