CardiAQ Valve Technologies announces first human implant of transcatheter bioprosthetic mitral heart valve

Nearly 50% of patients suffering from a diseased mitral heart valve with severe, symptomatic regurgitation are currently denied open-heart surgery because it is considered too risky; in the future, percutaneous Transcatheter Mitral Valve Implantation (TMVI) may offer new hope for these patients.

CardiAQ Valve Technologies (CardiAQ), which has developed the world’s first self-conforming and self-anchoring technology for nonsurgical transfemoral-transseptal percutaneous Transcatheter Mitral Valve Implantation (TMVI), today announced that its second-generation bioprosthetic mitral heart valve was successfully implanted as a compassionate treatment into a 72-year-old male suffering from severe mitral regurgitation (MR 4+) with multiple co-morbidities and ineligible for alternate treatment modalities. The breakthrough TMVI procedure was performed at the Tor Vergata Hospital in Rome, Italy, by an experienced Heart Team led by Director of Cardiology, Francesco Romeo, MD and interventional cardiologist Gian Paolo Ussia, MD, also including cardiac surgeon Giovanni Ruvolo MD, anesthesiologist Pasquale De Vico, MD, and echocardiographer Valeria Cammalleri, MD. Interventional cardiologist Lars Sondergaard, MD (Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen, Denmark) and cardiovascular surgeon and inventor of the CardiAQ TMVI technology Arshad Quadri, MD (St Francis Hospital, Hartford, CT) also participated.

“Our TMVI system is designed to make nonsurgical mitral heart valve replacement a future alternative to open-heart surgical replacement and repair,” said Rob Michiels, CEO of CardiAQ Valve Technologies. “CardiAQ currently offers the only transvessel implantation approach to treating MR. While several organizations have focused on a transapical approach to replace the mitral valve, we are the only company to have realized transfemoral-transseptal human implants,” added Michiels.

“Additional transseptal feasibility cases will take place over the next few months, and we anticipate starting the European CE Mark clinical trial for our transseptal technology by the end of summer. Meanwhile, we are about to initiate the European CE Mark trial for our transapical system, which has already completed 9 feasibility cases,” said Brent Ratz, co-founder and COO. “We are confident that the CardiAQ’s TMVI system will become a disruptive technology with an application as broad as the transcatheter aortic valve technology that was pioneered a decade ago.”

“These untreatable patients are the reason I founded this company, and these are the patients we need to be able to help,” added Dr. Quadri. “It has taken a tremendous amount of work to get to this point, but I have never been more excited about the future of this technology and of TMVI. The ability to do a fully percutaneous Mitral Valve replacement with no incisions, no bypass support, and being able to extubate the patient while still in the Cath Lab is truly remarkable.”

“We have now performed three CardiAQ TMVI cases (2 transapical and 1 transseptal) at Tor Vergata with excellent results, reducing the severe MR to trace and with no Mitral or outflow tract gradients,” said Gian Paolo Ussia, MD, primary investigator at the Rome Hospital. “We are convinced that these new procedures will in the future represent a substantial treatment improvement for our patients with mitral valve disease. Our heart team is excited to be a part of these groundbreaking clinical trials.”