Cardiologists at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit have successfully performed the country’s first implantation of the Neovasc Reducer—a stainless steel, hourglass-shaped heart mesh designed to alleviate difficult angina—the hospital announced in a statement Sept. 26.
Henry Ford cardiologist Gerald Koenig, MD, PhD, headed the June 19 procedure, which involved implanting the Reducer in a male patient’s heart via a catheter inserted through the groin. The process is minimally invasive and similar to implanting a coronary stent, he said. It shouldn’t take more than 20 minutes.
But, according to a release, the procedure had remained largely unused since its inception in the 1950s, after which point the development of heart bypass surgery and coronary stenting halted its momentum. Still, Koenig said the latter options, though they can improve blood flow to areas of the heart most affected by angina, don’t work for everyone.
“Angina affects millions of people in the United States,” he said in a release. “Unfortunately, bypass and medical intervention provides little relief to some. So we are hopeful that this procedure can be of some benefit.”
Before the Henry Ford patient’s procedure, the man told his doctors he could walk a maximum of two blocks before experiencing angina, which he rated a 7 or 8 on a pain scale. He also said he used nitroglycerin between two and three times a week to control his symptoms.
Koenig said with this type of procedure, doctors expect the patient’s cardiac tissue to grow over the mesh within six to eight weeks, narrowing the coronary sinus and ideally creating a backflow of pressure into the heart, pushing blood into areas that need more oxygen. That was the case 12 weeks after the Henry Ford patient’s Neovasc Reducer implantation, when he reported he could walk “several” miles before experiencing angina symptoms and was only forced to take nitroglycerin once or twice a month. He also said any chest pain he had—which was rare—was rated at a 3 to 4 on the pain scale.
The Reducer, a product of the Canadian manufacturer Neovasc, isn’t available for use in the U.S., but Koenig said it’s in development stateside and American trials are pending. It’s been available for commercial use in European patients with hard-to-treat angina since 2015.
After graduating from Indiana University-Bloomington with a bachelor’s in journalism, Anicka joined TriMed’s Chicago team in 2017 covering cardiology. Close to her heart is long-form journalism, Pilot G-2 pens, dark chocolate and her dog Harper Lee.