Our current trial aims to accomplish that. Called mitral valve repair, the operation is similar to a kind of surgery that is routinely performed on patients with lesser heart conditions. Heart failure most often arises as a result of other common diseases, including heart attack, narrowing of the arteries, high blood pressure and infection of heart muscle or valves. The weakened heart muscle deteriorates and cannot pump blood as efficiently, causing patients to feel tired and short of breath. Eventually, the heart fails.
Heart transplant is often the only option.
In the new paper, Dr. Bolling and his colleagues report on the progress of 92 patients who underwent mitral reconstruction at the U-M between 1993 and 1999. All had heart failure resulting from cardiomyopathy, or heart muscle disease, and had mitral valves so leaky that they allowed as much as 70 percent of the blood flow back through the opening. Many the patients' hearts had become severely enlarged to compensate for the muscle disease, stretching the area around the mitral valve so much that the valve's muscular flaps could not fully close. The valves usually overlap, sealing off the left atrium, or upper receiving chamber, from the left ventricle, or lower pumping chamber. In addition to having leaky valves, the patients' left ventricles all had extremely weak pumping ability, propelling one-third the normal amount of blood into the body with each beat.