Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Heart Center offers a noninvasive pulmonary valve replacement procedure, using the Alterra Adaptive Pre-stent with the Sapien S3 transcatheter pulmonary valve, for pediatric and adult patients with an oversized RVOT who have pulmonary regurgitation, a condition often resulting from the initial repair of congenital heart disease.
Pediatric cardiologist at Children’s Heart Center and Director of the Pediatric Cardiac Catheterization Labs at the Children’s Heart Center, Dr. Dennis Kim, performed the procedure earlier this year on a 17-year-old athlete who wanted to avoid open heart surgery.
To begin the procedure, Dr. Kim inserts the catheter, which houses a compressed Alterra stent, through a vein in the patient’s leg to implant the device. The catheter is then pushed through the blood vessels up to the main pulmonary artery. Here, the stent is released and attaches to the implantation site, forming a size-reducing frame that will hold the valve.
Another balloon-tipped catheter is inserted through the initial vein with the compressed valve loaded at its tip. The balloon catheter is pushed through the vessels up to the middle of the Alterra stent. When it reaches the stent, the artificial valve is expanded using the balloon. The valve anchors inside the stent where it functions like a natural valve.
